Doesn't it blow your mind that there are no "standards of engineering" or whatever for software? There's no licensure body for software engineers who build software running your car, and therefore no accountability on a personal level.
When an engineer builds a bridge, she has to personally sign off on the bridge, saying it's safe, and is risking not only her professional career, but I think she can also be jailed and held criminally liable if the bridge kills people due to negligence.
It blows my mind, at least, that no such thing exists for software.
The big problem with all those standards, frankly, is that you've gotta pay money to actually evaluate them.
There aren't any guarantees that they'll be useful, that they'll match the modern development processes in your language, that they'll fit your problem domain, etc.
Those standards are there primarily to make the publisher a buck--not to represent the codified wisdom of up-to-date practitioners in a field.
Until we've got a truly open-source standard for people to code against, we should stop wringing our hands about these things.
If you could have perfectly safe software, without requiring individual engineers to be licensed, would that be acceptable to you?
I'm not asking if you think such a thing would be possible or not - I'm asking if you would accept an alternate means of getting what I think we both want.
When an engineer builds a bridge, she has to personally sign off on the bridge, saying it's safe, and is risking not only her professional career, but I think she can also be jailed and held criminally liable if the bridge kills people due to negligence.
It blows my mind, at least, that no such thing exists for software.