Plumbers build all the pipes, but one of the aforementioned professional engineers created a drawing of where they would go and how the water and sewage would move through the building.
And crucially, independent regulatory bodies formed the building codes[0] which govern things like minimum acceptable pitch for waste lines, size and materials selection of pipes, acceptable pressures and temperatures, etc. Engineers can be held responsible for failing to design to these codes, and plumbers and other tradespersons can be held responsible for failing to build to them.
IMO what we really need in software is something like the various codes which govern fire safety, efficiency, etc of modern buildings. It exists in some safety critical domains but should be more widely applied.
The safety codes are where we accumulate the hard-won knowledge over time. Many of the rules in the codes were paid for with human lives lost.
IMO what we really need in software is something like the various codes which govern fire safety, efficiency, etc of modern buildings. It exists in some safety critical domains but should be more widely applied.
The safety codes are where we accumulate the hard-won knowledge over time. Many of the rules in the codes were paid for with human lives lost.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Code_Council