Good Grief. The reasons given that software engineering is "less critical" than physical engineering are specious at best, and at worst a complete misunderstanding of how software engineering is integral to physical engineering.
The opening line of "a long tradition of designing and building infrastructure in the public interest" is an immediate sign that this person has NO idea what a computing infrastructure is, and how much of them are part of "the public interest." Does he know about what glues together the public power grids or water supplies? The article goes on to pull out data breaches and other failures, insisting that things like this would never happen in physical engineering. Wishful thinking. How many bridges failed due to poor design? How many buildings have collapsed? He picks on the VW emissions issue, but manages to ignore how many cars get recalled due to - yep, engineering design flaws, not computer malfunctions. He talks about Google Docs failing but that's no different than being stopped at a drawbridge which has become stuck. Eventually, it will get unstuck, and you move along, with only your patience damaged. There IS a persistent problem with programmers of those, or their managers, who value speed over function, quantity over quality, and the stereotypical "It compiles. Ship it!" attitude. But, when your most hated brand of computer completely fails, it's often due to a design flaw of the machine, not the software. [800 machines and 600 all have memory board failures? A series of laptops that catches on fire, or another that all has a badly designed hinge that breaks? We all have these stories.] This guy does mention the issue of software being done slap-dash, but spends little time on it, and more reminds me of the people who get incensed at people with Ph.D.s and JDDs calling themselves "Doctor" because they're not a medical doctor. /rant _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
