Watching this, my first thought was how an aerospace engineer or a structural engineer or any engineer/manager of any complex established engineering field outs

Watching this, my first thought was how an aerospace engineer or a structural engineer or any engineer/manager of any complex established engineering field outside the software development field would react to this video. Probably with horror, shock and disbelief :) Though I haven't given this too much thought, I think it boils down to the fact that the software engineering process is not like (and who knows if it will ever be like) older well established engineering fields, and this could be due to a combination of: a) The unbelievably vast number of degrees of freedom and therefore infinite ways an engineer has to achieve a working model. Aside from the requirements and the hardware limits, the only limiting factor is the engineer's imagination and creativity. b) The mind blowing complexity of a large software project. The space shuttle, definitely one of the more complex machines built by mankind, is built from about 2.5 million separate parts. The Linux kernel (from 2012, according to wikipedia) has 15.9 million lines of code, and it is by no means the largest software project. c) The relatively young age of the field vs. the exponential rate at which new technologies are devised and introduced in it All this I feel currently puts software development somewhere between an engineering and a form of art. However, I'm sure many people would find it unsettling to think they have to trust a form of art when flying in a commercial jet at 30,000 feet, launching a $500M space mission, or endless other modern operations that depend on software to succeed. The fact is though, that it does succeed. I doubt the same methodologies are used in every large software project around the globe, but the bottom line is that whatever methodologies are used (not taking into account different levels of effectivity or cost) most apparently appear to succeed getting the job done without a established "standard".