[modal-soul]

Saw an interesting talk just about this topic [1]

The gist of it was: Other engineering disciplines use the techniques you've mentioned because of the the costs, both time and money, associated with getting it wrong.

Software engineering lends itself to different methods of development and construction, as the costs associated with getting it wrong or making changes after the fact are much lower. (For most applications, anyways).

As such, (this definition would be another sticking point) these less rigid methods should still be considered engineering, with engineering being a balancing of resources with outcomes, not fixation on mathematical models.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhdlBHHimeM

[6510]

*Assumed to be lower.

What is actually happening we don't know. IT is dramatically changing everything. It's not all bad but it isn't all good either. I hate to give examples since it is really vague what goes in and what comes out and people tend to mistake an example for full coverage but... for example, we have no idea what drives suicide rates.

[DanBC]

> for example, we have no idea what drives suicide rates.

This is a good point but I wanted to make it a bit more clear.

Across a population we have a good idea of the risk factors and of the things that increase rates of suicide: deprivation, abuse, substance misuse[1], previous self harm.

The bit we have no idea about is how to apply these to an individual person to see if they're high or low risk of suicide.

There are a load of different tools that input lots of different information and put out a risk rating, and none of them are as good as just asking the person "what do you think your risk is?"