Benjamin Franz wrote:

> On Fri, 31 Dec 2004, M. David Peterson wrote:
>
>> That and your not going to die if something goes wrong with each
>> built-in safety-switch in your test code... Its hard for me to think
>> of the implications of failed code compared to implications of a
>> failed flight.  Please don't take offense by this as I understand what
>> it is you are suggesting but still have a hard time comparing a
>> computer crash to a plane crash.
>
>
> You should subscribe to the Risks Digest. More that a couple of deaths 
> are attributable to broken software.
>
> People treat software like it isn't real. Software machines are just 
> as real as hardware machines - and often control hardware machines. If 
> you are killed by a radiation therapy machine because of broken 
> software - you are just as dead as if the cause was broken hardware.
> <URL:http://www.ccnr.org/fatal_dose.html>
>
> And yes - commercial planes _HAVE_ crashed where one of the proximate 
> causes was broken software (accidents are rarely 'one thing' - they 
> are usually two or more things in unusual combination): Put American 
> Airlines Flight 965 into a search engine.
>
> I'm of the opinion that software is where engineering was about a 
> century ago: In demand, unregulated, and open to anyone who wants to 
> call themselves a 'programmer', regardless of skill or training. 
> Disasters directly traceable to poor 'engineering' by people with 
> neither skill or training killed a number of people and laws were 
> passed restricting who can legally call themselves an 'engineer'.
>
> By the end of this century, I will be amazed if you will still be able 
> to call yourself a 'software engineer/progammer' without a legally 
> mandated certification, license and professional standards.

i was hoping for that at the end of the last century.

rick



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