[mrighele]

I found products made by car companies to be in general more reliable than those made by software companies (either in Silicon Valley or not). I trust my life to my car (software included) every day. I wouldn't do that with any software of my smartphone, not even the OS.

[Laaw]

Doesn't it blow your mind that there are no "standards of engineering" or whatever for software? There's no licensure body for software engineers who build software running your car, and therefore no accountability on a personal level.

When an engineer builds a bridge, she has to personally sign off on the bridge, saying it's safe, and is risking not only her professional career, but I think she can also be jailed and held criminally liable if the bridge kills people due to negligence.

It blows my mind, at least, that no such thing exists for software.

[dogma1138]

Does any one really thinks that true?

http://www.ldra.com/en/software-quality-test-tools/group/by-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Industry_Software_Reliab...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISRA_C

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_26262

[Laaw]

None of those are what I described, though.

[dogma1138]

> Doesn't it blow your mind that there are no "standards of engineering" or whatever for software?

ISO, IEC, etc.

> There's no licensure body for software engineers who build software running your car, and therefore no accountability on a personal level.

MISRA, SCSC, etc.

[Laaw]

Combine my individual sentences, as I did, and try again.

[ambrop7]

There are many standards of engineering involving software.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_26262

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_62304

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISRA_C

[angersock]

The big problem with all those standards, frankly, is that you've gotta pay money to actually evaluate them.

There aren't any guarantees that they'll be useful, that they'll match the modern development processes in your language, that they'll fit your problem domain, etc.

Those standards are there primarily to make the publisher a buck--not to represent the codified wisdom of up-to-date practitioners in a field.

Until we've got a truly open-source standard for people to code against, we should stop wringing our hands about these things.

[eru]

Not sure whether software is the domain that standards should be applied to. Software is just a tool.

If you use software to build a bridge, bridge standards should apply. If you use software to build a car, car standards should apply.

If you use software to build a fart app, fart app standards should apply. (Which frankly, don't have to be very high.)

[jes]

If you could have perfectly safe software, without requiring individual engineers to be licensed, would that be acceptable to you?

I'm not asking if you think such a thing would be possible or not - I'm asking if you would accept an alternate means of getting what I think we both want.

[slavik81]

A company I worked for had a permit to practice and required engineering sign-off for each release.