
Software is a long con - fanf2
https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/09/14/software-is-a-long-con/
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wballard
Hmm — fake analogy. Bridge fall down would be more on the scale of, a software
install stopped all service permanently, self erased, and could never be
restarted.

Real software quality issues are more like re paving, painting, new cables,
scraping off rust, closing for inspection — and slow commute traffic over the
bridge.

Argument by analogy is just sophistry, the real argument is to precisely
account for the total economic cost of defects, and what the cost would be to
correct them. But that is a lot more effort than I have ever seen in a blog
post.

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andrewfromx
“Hey guys!” he said. “So it looks like there’s a crew of Russian bridge
destroyers with hammers and lighters who are running around in the middle of
the night setting fires to bridges and knocking off braces with hammers. They
started in Ukraine but they’re spreading around the world now, and we don’t
know if our bridges are safe. They’ve studied bridges carefully and they seem
to be good at finding where they’re most flammable and which braces to knock
off with their hammer.”

~~~
andrewfromx
“Maybe we need to make them out of non-flammable material and rivet them
instead of using exposed braces and clamps.” this is a great analogy to make
you see our software problem in a new light.

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SentientNo4
Computer software does not exist in isolation; it is built upon layers and
layers of abstractions, starting from hardware and ending with your
framework/language of choice, resulting in a system so complex that no person
alive is able to grok it in it's entirety. Bugs can be found in any of these
hundreds of separate but interoperating layers, and no entity it's going to
assume full liability for this entire construct.

A better analogy would be if the bridge was interconnected with every other
piece of infrastructure in it's environment, from the buildings in vicinity to
the ground it's built on, and all of these were in continuous shift and
transformation. No sane engineer would take full responsibility for designing
and building such a bridge.

And I haven't even touched on the subject of money and it's implications.
"Whereas physics is math with the constraint of reality, software engineering
is math with the constraint of money."

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jnwatson
The argument falls apart when you ask: are you willing to pay 10 times as much
(or start paying something at all) to use your software.

Software development is an economic activity, and as long as there are
incentives to ship first with the most functionality regardless of quality, we
will continue to ship insecure and broken software.

Don't blame the engineers, blame the system.

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Finnucane
This is why I don't think of programmers as engineers.

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_pmf_
> OK, obviously it’s not bridges I’m talking about, it’s software.

Actually, you're talking about neither but are merely trying to create a
narrative.

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trexen
Too many words. Try communicating the point as succinctly as you possibly can.

