[irundebian]

I think I agree that software engineering is more complex than building bridges if you take two comparable project. But I don't agree that software engineering is more complex than building rockets which requires - besides a lot physics know how - also deep understanding of electronics and hardware systems. And if we look at the Ariane 5, the software engineers failed.

[imglorp]

An even more demonstrative example, the STS might (still?) be the most complex physical system ever.

The orbiter software group managed to not kill anybody with their software although there were some 17 bugs flown. The same cannot be said of the mechanical and human management systems, which killed one crew and possibly two.

Real software projects often fails for similar reasons, when somebody says "we know it's not designed for that condition, fly it anyway".

[pas]

Rockets reliability is largely held back by their extreme trade off toward maintenance vs robustness. When you have to check everything and replace a bunch of things between flights, you're bound to miss something.

And that of course impacts the software side too, the rocket is constantly changing, the software has to change too, bugs are guaranteed.