
Will software ever be engineering? - jancona
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3345
======
jdfoiawejf
The majority of software development will never be engineering simply because
it doesn't need to be.

The term "engineering" when referring to bridge building, etc. fundamentally
reflects a level of process discipline and technical quality control. Although
I think these notions appeal to many programmers, most software just isn't
important enough to require them. And because these things hard to do and
unnecessary, they just won't happen.

That said, there is software that benefits from and requires real discipline.
There is quite a lot of hard real-time and safety-critical systems programming
practiced _today_ that constitutes engineering.

------
binspace
> UPDATE: My wife the attorney acidly points out yet another way in which
> Sonmez’s argument is flawed and unhelpful. “If surgeons had the failure rate
> of software engineers,” she observes, “they’d all be in jail.”

