Reminds me of the Therac-25 incident..
this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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Software Gore
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This, right here, is why "professional" software "engineers" should be licensed.
Former healthcare to software engineer working on a master's here. My colleagues who were licensed back in healthcare weren't all of the same quality. They all made mistakes at one point or another, some pretty bad some minor. There's no difference though, minor could just as well become major.
The way they get around it in healthcare is by throwing more people at the problem. You have a physician who is good at pointing in the general direction of the problem and a solution, then you have all the auxiliary staff who will narrow down on the solution based on their field. But at any single point all of them could fuck up, or one of them could.
Now that I'm a software engineer and I've written enough code to do stuff. I can confidently say that licensing will not solve this problem. Especially if there aren't enough people involved. Which is probably what was missed in the beginning.
Anyway long rant over.
Licensing isn't about magically ensuring that the practitioner won't make mistakes; it's about holding the practitioner accountable for his mistakes, which in theory gives him more incentive to be more careful -- or to change his practice's workflows and systems so as to be better able to detect and correct mistakes.
In fact, I would argue that the "throwing more people at the problem" phenomenon in healthcare is an example of that very thing. Do you think they'd keep staffing levels equally high without licensing? 'Cause I sure don't.
So, what you say is let's hold the lowest level accountable, the person who may don't have any power over the fcked up decisions about the amount of developers, presence of QA, and timeline.
No, licensing will not make "accountable" people magically incentivised enough to make no mistakes
A licensed Professional Engineer is exactly the opposite of the lowest level person. In fact, that's part of the point: giving the experts the power to say "no" to unsafe/unethical management.
Ok, stated that way it makes more sense, thanks for the explanation
Don't think that kind of thing is going to happen, though
Never gonna happen as long as the demand is so much higher than the supply.
Perhaps it should be a requirement for certain things though, like the medical area.
You don't have to have a college degree to become a licensed P.E.; it just takes more years working under the supervision of one. (I think it's something like your options are a bachelor's degree + 4 years P.E. supervised experience or 8 years P.E. supervised experience alone.)
In software "engineering," sure. In e.g. civil engineering, on the other hand, pretty much everybody's either gonna be licensed or on the path to it.
I guess the regulators don't consider software to count as real engineering, LOL!
You conspicuously left out local jurisdictions, and guess what: that's where the requirements kick in (except maybe for trivial stuff, the city or county is going to want plans to have a P.E.'s stamp on them before they'll issue a building permit).
Also, NCEES certification and professional licensure isn't the same thing, so your claim was kind of a red herring in two ways. Licenses are issued by the state.
LOL, you're just quibbling to be argumentative. Are you going to try to make an argument that having 100% of local jurisdictions βοΈ"decide"βοΈ βοΈ"on their own"βοΈ to conform to nationwide standards of practice instead of having a "central system [of] regulation" makes any meaningful, practical difference, or are we done here?
Let me tell you some shocking news: Most of the majors in Computer Science and Engineering (in the university I took it, one of the most prestigious in my country) don't know shit about software engineering. They know only how to burp out the same leetcode style programs they were taught and that's it. I'd trust a guy that managed to learn software engineering on it's own through years of FAFO than (most) university majors.
They don't look like the one who is getting overly-emotional here.
That was supposed to be funny? Are you sure?
One of those was you, so 13 actual opinions that matter.
Compared to the 44 that didn't find it funny at all.
I'm not sure 'people agree with me' and 'they think I'm funny' mean the same thing.
I apologize. Clearly, you are the world's new George Carlin. I'm just unable to understand a wit like yours. But I am glad that you put that you were being sarcastic in all caps. Jokes are always funnier if you explain that they're jokes, so that's probably why those 13 people thought it was so hilarious.
Yes, I know, as I said, I'm really glad you put 'SARCASM' in all caps like that at the end so everyone would know it was a joke because that's what makes jokes funny.
In fact, it would have been even funnier if you had started it with "THIS IS A FUNNY THING I WILL TYPE NEXT:"
You should probably edit your post and add that in for maximum humor. Think how many upvotes you would get to brag about then!
Well that's good, because I certainly haven't said anything funny. I mean, if I did, I would have notified you in all caps.
When you get near a sentence that makes sense, let me know.
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