[zzzeek]

just not even ten years ago the discussion here was all about "software engineering" trying to be more legitimized as a formal engineering practice, if there should be licensing, if there should be certifications, lots of threads about formal methods to prove algorithms work, and look where we are now. Arguing if humans should even care look at the code we are producing and shipping. crazy shit man

[rerdavies]

Pretty sure that was 25 years ago, not 10 years ago. And then, 20 years ago, we were coming to terms with the fact that all of that stuff was a spectacular failure. And then, 15 year ago, we had found much better ways to do things.

I don't miss that phase of the evolution of software development practice at all.

[zzzeek]

I'm not talking about UML or waterfall. Talking more about formal methods which were still pretty common here amongst the various lisp/haskell/clojure discussions etc. I'm pretty sure this is still a relevant technique for certain classes of software.