[toss1]

And yet many computer programmers and hardware developers, with or without any kind of license or certification, write or design systems that are critical to life and limb; everything including medical systems, airplane systems, automotive systems including drive-by-wire and 'self-driving, engineering systems for design of life critical structures, etc., etc., etc. It's not all low-consequence or recoverable like front end web dev or accounting software. And conversely, many actions of physicians and cops are inconsequential (while many are also life-or-death).

[ffgjgf1]

Ordinary developers are effectively just construction workers with a bit more creative freedom.

In al critical systems they are just one part of a chain and all their work has to be verified/validated by at least a few additional actors.

A policeman can just decide to randomly murder someone (and often face no repercussions). While a construction worker or a software developer can cause significant harm as well they almost never have near complete autonomy.

[zdragnar]

To use a similar example, in my state, you can build your own custom car or airplane from scratch and get it approved, no mechanic or engineering license needed.

Also, if you aren't working as an engineer for another company but are self employed, it's not a bad idea to get some form of errors and omissions insurance, which is comparable to the malpractice insurance doctors get.

[john_the_writer]

I have a note on my desk "If there is a bad tech option." It's a reminder not to get mad when my boss or their boss decides something stupid. Like using GraphQL to upload large amounts of data. Or deciding a 5 person team should be developing micro-services. Or moving everything to tailwinds.

As a developer I don't have the power to stop these bad decisions. I just have to stew in them. Holding me responsible for the bad code that gets written to kludge past the bad decisions.

Better I suppose than the company that had me build a rails app to move millions of records an hour, hosted on their personal windows laptop. (yeah rails on windows)

[codetrotter]

> Or moving everything to tailwinds.

What’s wrong with Tailwind CSS?

[throwaway48476]

Another problem is how much companies exaggerate the effectiveness of their systems and don't share the false positive rate.