<story><title>Why are we so bad at software engineering?</title><url>https://www.bitlog.com/2020/02/12/why-are-we-so-bad-at-software-engineering/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>harry8</author><text>You can&amp;#x27;t discuss software in this context without discussing IBM global services, oracle, computer associates, accenture etc etc.&lt;p&gt;Shut them all down, watch the average quality of software improve dramatically, immediately.&lt;p&gt;Next have someone qualified on every single board of directors and have each board create an appropriate sub committee. The same way you have a qualified accountant and audit sub-comittee. Have someone with proper CS &amp;amp; IT credentials and an IT oversight comittee. (Sure mostly the initial massive win is warding of the vampires mentioned in the previous paragraph but there is huge, huge value beyond that.)&lt;p&gt;Having ignorant people making the resource allocation decision is idiotic in the extreme and leads to overpriced, rubbish quality outcomes. Like deciding to use some garbage vote countinga app that doesn&amp;#x27;t and can&amp;#x27;t work - who did that? Can we just say they are utterly ignorant of the field they made important decisions concerning or do we need to get their name and demonstrate it.&lt;p&gt;Why are we so bad at software engineering? We are not! We just aren&amp;#x27;t. We do amazing things. We can do it reliably. We can do it economically. Software is f*&amp;amp;king awesome.&lt;p&gt;Why is there so much corruption in the decision making process leading to garbage quality overpriced, risky and idiotic software? Now that is a better question to ask.&lt;p&gt;Why is the idea of actually regulating foolhardy risk-taking startups (self-driving, privacy invading, turn-key facist state surveiling etc) so controversial? Because we can&amp;#x27;t even make good decisions about CRUD development at a policy level in a fortune 500 company - forget a policy decsion at a government level, you know it&amp;#x27;s going to be awful and redolent with regulatory capture.&lt;p&gt;We just need to grow up and stop blaming the geeks for the utter manure shoveled at us by ignorant jocks on golf courses determined to exclude anyone with actual understanding, insight and knowledge. And the manure shoveled by the actual geeks with a massive risk appetite and zero care for externalities beyond their startup making cash. Really. That&amp;#x27;s it. That&amp;#x27;s all.&lt;p&gt;Software is FINE. Decision making about software is SO bad, so awful, so hideous we try not to think about it lest it rots our minds with despair.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jcranmer</author><text>I sense a fair amount of the No True Scotsman fallacy going on in your comment--you&amp;#x27;re arguing that there&amp;#x27;s no fundamental issue at software engineering, only evil management oppressing engineers from unleashing perfect software. But, I suspect that we are so bad at our jobs that we build broken stuff all the time and merely blame our users for not knowing that everything is broken. (Try putting a space in your home directory and see how much stuff breaks.)&lt;p&gt;Heartbleed should be the equivalent of the Kansas City Hyatt disaster for our profession. It is a failure mode that is so elementary, so obvious, so easily avoidable that its occurrence should be a sign of deep failure in &lt;i&gt;several&lt;/i&gt; processes meant to avoid it, and it should be grounds to open an investigation into criminal negligence. And yet... OpenSSL had &lt;i&gt;no&lt;/i&gt; process for catching this stuff. Very few software projects do--I suspect yours do not either.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why are we so bad at software engineering?</title><url>https://www.bitlog.com/2020/02/12/why-are-we-so-bad-at-software-engineering/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>harry8</author><text>You can&amp;#x27;t discuss software in this context without discussing IBM global services, oracle, computer associates, accenture etc etc.&lt;p&gt;Shut them all down, watch the average quality of software improve dramatically, immediately.&lt;p&gt;Next have someone qualified on every single board of directors and have each board create an appropriate sub committee. The same way you have a qualified accountant and audit sub-comittee. Have someone with proper CS &amp;amp; IT credentials and an IT oversight comittee. (Sure mostly the initial massive win is warding of the vampires mentioned in the previous paragraph but there is huge, huge value beyond that.)&lt;p&gt;Having ignorant people making the resource allocation decision is idiotic in the extreme and leads to overpriced, rubbish quality outcomes. Like deciding to use some garbage vote countinga app that doesn&amp;#x27;t and can&amp;#x27;t work - who did that? Can we just say they are utterly ignorant of the field they made important decisions concerning or do we need to get their name and demonstrate it.&lt;p&gt;Why are we so bad at software engineering? We are not! We just aren&amp;#x27;t. We do amazing things. We can do it reliably. We can do it economically. Software is f*&amp;amp;king awesome.&lt;p&gt;Why is there so much corruption in the decision making process leading to garbage quality overpriced, risky and idiotic software? Now that is a better question to ask.&lt;p&gt;Why is the idea of actually regulating foolhardy risk-taking startups (self-driving, privacy invading, turn-key facist state surveiling etc) so controversial? Because we can&amp;#x27;t even make good decisions about CRUD development at a policy level in a fortune 500 company - forget a policy decsion at a government level, you know it&amp;#x27;s going to be awful and redolent with regulatory capture.&lt;p&gt;We just need to grow up and stop blaming the geeks for the utter manure shoveled at us by ignorant jocks on golf courses determined to exclude anyone with actual understanding, insight and knowledge. And the manure shoveled by the actual geeks with a massive risk appetite and zero care for externalities beyond their startup making cash. Really. That&amp;#x27;s it. That&amp;#x27;s all.&lt;p&gt;Software is FINE. Decision making about software is SO bad, so awful, so hideous we try not to think about it lest it rots our minds with despair.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jussij</author><text>&amp;gt; Decision making about software is SO bad, so awful, so hideous we try not to think about it lest it rots our minds with despair.&lt;p&gt;And to add the icing to your cake, more often than not there are no consequences for those making these bad decisions.</text></comment>