3 ms·

All of those things have been happening for over a decade. There is no actual discipline of software design today. It's just people googling shit, copy-and-past

All of those things have been happening for over a decade. There is no actual discipline of software design today. It's just people googling shit, copy-and-pasting, and praying. I often work with people who refuse to use software unless it's so well known that they can google for stackoverflow answers or blog walkthroughs. Not because well-known software is stable or feature-filled; no, they literally are just afraid of having to solve a problem themselves. I'm not sure they could do their jobs without canned answers and walkthroughs. (and I'm not even talking about AI) This is why I keep saying we need a professional standards body. Somebody needs to draw a line in the sand and at least pretend to be real adults. There needs to be an authoritative body that determines the acceptable way to do this job. Not just reading random people's blogs, or skimming forums for sycophants making popular opinions look like the correct ones. Not just doing whatever a person feels like, with their own personal philosophy and justification. There needs to be a minimum standard, at the very least. Ideally also design criteria, standard parts, and a baseline of tolerances to at least have the tiniest inkling if something is going to fall over as soon as someone touches it. Even more should be required for actual safety systems, or things that impact the lives of millions. And the safety-critical stuff should have to be inspected, just like buildings and cars and food and electric devices are. The lunatics are running the asylum, so that's not happening anytime soon. It will take a long series of disasters for the government to threaten to regulate our jobs, and then we will finally get off our asses and do what we should have long ago.

rcxdude 2y ago
The design work in fields which are heavily regulated like that is even more copy-and-pasted. Not only will the average angineer be afraid of solving problems themselves, anyone who is willing to do it will be actively discouraged by the processes from doing so, even if the copy-and-paste answers have severe, known flaws. The grass is not greener on the other side here. (Safety critical work is, in fact, inspected and accredited like you would wish, and I have seen the ugly, ugly, terrifying results inside the sausage factory. It is not a solution for people who don't care or don't have a clue, in fact it empowers them)
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  Oh for sure there's some bullshit out there. The self-attestations of the DoD alone are laughable. But I have also seen a number of critical systems with no inspection. Water, power, financial, health care, emergency services, etc. The kind of shit that from a National Security perspective we should have some eyes on, but don't.
caseyy 2y ago
I agree with the frustration but I think heavily regulated professions often copy+paste even more. See: modern Western medicine, where most of what being a general physician is involves following a flow chart. You get really bad outcomes from it too. I’d like to have standard professional certification because I could use it as proof of the effort I put into understanding software engineering that many ICs have not. But I think that many people have “that’ll do it” values and whatever professional context you put them in, they will do the worst possible acceptable job. The best you can do is not hire them and we try to do that already — with LeetCode, engineering interviews, and so on. That effort does work when companies make it.
anon-3988 2y ago
A standard body standardized C++, clearly having a standard doesn't help.

rcxdude 2y ago

The design work in fields which are heavily regulated like that is even more copy-and-pasted. Not only will the average angineer be afraid of solving problems themselves, anyone who is willing to do it will be actively discouraged by the processes from doing so, even if the copy-and-paste answers have severe, known flaws. The grass is not greener on the other side here. (Safety critical work is, in fact, inspected and accredited like you would wish, and I have seen the ugly, ugly, terrifying results inside the sausage factory. It is not a solution for people who don't care or don't have a clue, in fact it empowers them)

0xbadcafebee 2y ago
Oh for sure there's some bullshit out there. The self-attestations of the DoD alone are laughable. But I have also seen a number of critical systems with no inspection. Water, power, financial, health care, emergency services, etc. The kind of shit that from a National Security perspective we should have some eyes on, but don't.

caseyy 2y ago

I agree with the frustration but I think heavily regulated professions often copy+paste even more. See: modern Western medicine, where most of what being a general physician is involves following a flow chart. You get really bad outcomes from it too. I’d like to have standard professional certification because I could use it as proof of the effort I put into understanding software engineering that many ICs have not. But I think that many people have “that’ll do it” values and whatever professional context you put them in, they will do the worst possible acceptable job. The best you can do is not hire them and we try to do that already — with LeetCode, engineering interviews, and so on. That effort does work when companies make it.

anon-3988 2y ago

A standard body standardized C++, clearly having a standard doesn't help.