There's a saying in most other fields of engineering (civil, chemical, mechanical, etc.): "Regulations are written in blood." A whole lot of bridges collapsed and a whole lot of people died before strong requirements were put in place.
It seems we are on the path to repeat history with software engineering, what with how software and the internet is being developed with such little regard for public safety and long term consequences.
Unfortunately, it appears that the "free love" phase of software engineering is coming to an end, as society now relies more and more on software and major tech players for life and safety. It's starting to get real for software engineering.
Luckily, other engineering fields have been here before, so this sort of transition shouldn't be anything new.
> It seems we are on the path to repeat history with software engineering, what with how software and the internet is being developed with such little regard for public safety and long term consequences.
> Unfortunately, it appears that the "free love" phase of software engineering is coming to an end, as society now relies more and more on software and major tech players for life and safety. It's starting to get real for software engineering.
Software will always be a spread of reliability requirements, from pacemakers on one side to excel reports on the other. Part of being a responsible user is choosing software with the right balance of economics and reliability for the job.
Even if business schools start lecturing their students about details of software development, and even if these details actually sink in, there will still be many other kinds of work their students don't learn anything about. The real problem, I think, is graduates of these schools who believe they can manage people in a generic way without understanding the details of the work.
It seems we are on the path to repeat history with software engineering, what with how software and the internet is being developed with such little regard for public safety and long term consequences.
Unfortunately, it appears that the "free love" phase of software engineering is coming to an end, as society now relies more and more on software and major tech players for life and safety. It's starting to get real for software engineering.
Luckily, other engineering fields have been here before, so this sort of transition shouldn't be anything new.
Relevant Tom Scott video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZM9YdO_QKk