| > Both appellations invoke some sort of idealized professional standards The key point of the comment was that engineers do have standards, both from professional bodies and often legislative ones. Craftsmen do not have such standards (most of them, at least where I am from). Joiners definitely don't. Edit: I would also disagree with "pumping out bug ridden mess that software's become." We are miles ahead in security of any other industry. Physical locks have been broken for decades and nobody cares. Windows are breakable by a rock or a hammer and nobody cares. In terms of bugs, that is extraordinary low as well. In pretty much any other industry, it would be considered a user error, e.g. do not put mud as a detergent into the washing machine. Whole process is getting better each year. Version control wasn't common in 2000s (I think Linux didn't use version control until 2002). CI/CD. Security analyzers. Memory managed/safe languages. Automatic testing. Refactoring tools. We somehow make hundreds of millions of lines of code work together. I seriously doubt there is any industry that can do that at our price point. |
That is not such a great analogy, in my opinion. If burglars could remotely break into many houses in parallel while being mostly non-trackable and staying in the safety of their own home, things would look differently on the doors and windows front.