[jballanc]

You over-estimate the degree to which the other engineering fields you mentioned have solved safety and reliability. Just to name a few:

- Tacoma Narrows bridge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge

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

- Hyatt Regency walkway collapse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse

- Challenger disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaste...

- Columbia disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaste...

- Vioxx: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rofecoxib

...and plenty more. The only thing that separates software engineering with the other engineering disciplines is that there is a structure (usually in the form of code/spec enforcement) for internalizing and learning from disasters when they happen.

[minikites]

The Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse happened 80 years ago, the Hyatt Regency was nearly 40. When did you last read about a software bug?

[xenophonf]

Professional engineering has plenty of recent disasters to point to, whether failures in design, construction, operation, or security:

The Waco fertilizer plant explosion (2013), cause determined to be arson (2016)

San Francisco Bay Bridge seismic bolt failures (2013), caused during construction: https://www.nace.org/CORROSION-FAILURES-San-Francisco-Bay-Br...

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster (2011), design/regulatory failure

And so forth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Industrial_disasters_...

And so on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Engineering_failures

[jcranmer]

Phones that suddenly combust came out in 2016. The Big Dig ceiling collapse was 2006. Rana Plaza collapsed in 2013.

Serious engineering failures are still happening. Sure, the most famous ones may be decades old, but those aren't the only ones.