[giantg2]

Standardized food safety practices, pre-approved and comparatively trivial recipes, state/county inspections, etc. None of which apply to software. One is fairly trivial and standardized. The other is massively complex, rapidly changing, and unable to be boiled down to a standard set of trivial procedures.

And to answer your question more directly, the flour itself causes the damage. The vulnerability is only damaging if a malicious actor takes advantage of it.

[beedeebeedee]

> Standardized food safety practices

Food safety practices only became standardized after regulation was enacted.

> pre-approved and comparatively trivial recipes

That sounds like most software development.

I think you are unwittingly making the case that software development is a lot like food production. Software development is only beginning to get regulated because it is only now reaching the level where it is hazardous to public safety, unlike food production which reached that a long time ago.

[giantg2]

"Food safety practices only became standardized after regulation was enacted."

Because you actually can standardize them. Software isn't so simple.

"> pre-approved and comparatively trivial recipes

That sounds like most software development."

Lol no that does not. Why wouldn't high school graduates or drop outs work in software instead of at fast food? The number of languages, frameworks, patterns, etc are much more complex than basic sanitation and time/temp/acidity.

[kube-system]

> Because you actually can standardize them. Software isn't so simple.

It isn't simple due to choice, not due to the nature of software. Software is relatively simple compared to other meat-space engineering disciplines. Software engineering is an relatively immature engineering discipline, but it is implicated in enough safety critical systems these days that it is about time to start maturing.

It will be painful but I welcome more software regulatory standards, because it is necessary for our trade to mature.

[jandrewrogers]

> Software is relatively simple compared to other meat-space engineering disciplines.

On what basis do you make this claim? If you do the same degree of optimization in software that is routinely applied in physical engineering disciplines that have some of most complex system dynamics problems, such as chemical engineering, the dynamics of software systems are qualitatively much more complex. We expect chemical engineering to design systems that asymptotically approach theoretically optimal efficiency along multiple dimensions. In software we rarely see anything approaching similar optimality except for small and exquisitely engineered components that are beyond the ken of most software engineers. In large software systems, the design problem is so complex that computational optimization to the degree we see in physical engineering is completely intractable, so similar approaches do not apply.

In chemical engineering, the measure of system complexity is roughly the size of the system of differential equations the govern the total dynamics of the system. Computers then solve for the system, which can be computationally intensive. We do this routinely, with some caveats. An optimal design is not computable but we can get asymptotically close via approximation.

In software engineering, the equivalent would be formal optimization and verification of the entire program. The complexity of doing this for non-trivial software is completely intractable. Software has so many degrees of freedom compared to physical systems that they aren’t even the same class of problem. It is arguable if it is even possible in theory to achieve similar degrees of design robustness and efficiency that we see in physical engineering systems.

Unlike physical engineering, where a computer takes a set of equations and constraints, crunches numbers, and produces an approximately optimal design, no such thing is possible in software.

[kube-system]

I wasn't really thinking "complexity" in terms of formal academic problem scope, but more so "complexity" in the surface of how it interacts with the rest of the world, which is more along the lines of what would be relevant to a regulator.

A regulator doesn't really care about the internal complexities of an LLM and whether or not that is more difficult than cracking petroleum. They care more about how those things interact with the rest of the world. Software is pretty limited in how it interacts with the rest of the world.

[davorak]

> A regulator doesn't really care about the internal complexities

Seems like you are over simplifying the process and goals of those creating new regulations and law makers often have to care about the internal complexities because they care about the consequences new regulations will have.

When a law maker is making regulations for an industry they should care about the internal complexities since that determines the long term effects of the regulation. Law makes should care if new regulations kill small businesses or, in an extreme case that is not happening with the CRA, kills of an industry, since that effects the economy of the the country they are law makers for in addition to directly impact people represented by those law makers.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

It’s probable to make the case that some forms of software are simple enough to regulate. How many Supabase style crud apps have been made in our lifetimes (not shading Supabase, they’re just automating the commonalities here)

[kube-system]

All software is simple enough to regulate. You don't have to micromanage every single line someone writes to regulate something. The way most professional regulations work is that someone writes down the safety practices that should be done, and then the law requires people to do those things.

For example, one might require some software to undergo various degrees of planning, testing, analysis, support, documentation, etc.

Right now, the amount of planning, testing, analysis, support, and documentation required by law is generally zero. This might be fine for someone's hobby project, but it is not okay for software that human lives depend on.

[jocoda]

> ...for software that human lives depend on.

who decides, and how?

[erik_seaberg]

Knuth’s code has bugs. NASA’s code has bugs. I would like to think that someday our profession might be able to achieve high enough quality to survive with liability, but today nobody is close to that at all.

[gavinhoward]

I think that liability shouldn't require perfection, just close enough as long as the criteria is objective.

I personally think that any criteria that SQLite and Curl can't pass is too strict.

[erik_seaberg]

The AMA doesn’t require perfection, yet a doctor has to pay six-figure liability insurance premiums for the risk of harming a small fraction of his patients. I don’t have faith that this would be run more practically.

[gavinhoward]

We have that problem in the medical world, but for some reason, we don't have it in the engineering world.

Why? I don't know. Is the medical world just messed up? Or is there something wrong with licensure?

[erik_seaberg]

I think it’s because civil and mechanical engineering weren’t invented from scratch in living memory. We already have some safe, conservative materials and designs for them to reuse.

Our profession is still in a very early stage, sort of like the era of barbers performing surgery.