Comment by coldpie
Given the state of the software industry, it's honestly more surprising that this doesn't happen more often. Our industry is a complete joke, and somehow we've been given responsibility over people's lives.
Given the state of the software industry, it's honestly more surprising that this doesn't happen more often. Our industry is a complete joke, and somehow we've been given responsibility over people's lives.
We are really only about 60 years old as a proper profession, and we seem to be trailing behind doctors for professionalism and standard of care by about 100 years.
I don’t know what will turn out to be our penicillin, or our Joseph Lister, but in 1960 the former is something that didn’t exist when older doctors were in school, and latter had only been dead for fifty years. It may not have happened for us yet.
On the topic of professions: Joseph Lister was a surgeon. Modern surgery (which I define as surgery aided by anesthesia) is a relatively recent discipline dating to the early 19th century. The introduction of anesthesia made lengthy and intricate operations possible but also ushered in novel problems and complications. Surgery as a field had to learn tough lessons over time.
He was known more for antiseptics but the biggest surgery moment for me will always be “using soap” and I wonder what the software equivalent is.
Like I said we are still young, so it feels sort of arrogant saying we have figured something out when I know how many things are industry standard now that almost resulted in shouting matches trying to get done even 20 years ago. Maybe our soap moment is coming up ten years from now.
But I suspect automated testing may be the wash your hands, because it represents a sort of hygiene that “we” used to just say fuck it or make a minimal effort.
I’m going on a limb here because i’m not directly on the software industry but my first suspect would be metrics and the fact that you have to deliver a product at certain time “no matter what”.
> Given the state of the software industry, it's honestly more surprising that this doesn't happen more often.
It probably does. We just don't notice.
> Our industry is a complete joke, and somehow we've been given responsibility over people's lives.
Amen to that. kqr made some choice comments the other day in that thread about the airliner that came to within a hair of crashing due to running out of fuel. Thinking about risk is not a skill that we're born with and it is always sobering to read the 'risks digest' for a bit and to see how thin the ice really is.