Peter Miller wrote:
<i>will be the whole point</i>. Unless we get in first.
Will the parallel be: you get malpractice insurance, or you can have
your future wages garnished forever if you get sued. Doctors have to
pay their malpractice insurance to have their pro-bono work covered. I
expect software folks will too.
Regulation won't be forced apon us. You already need to get professional
indemnity to work with most govt depts.
The biggest problem with software development is that any type of
regulation is not going to stop people making mistakes. What is needed
is better methods, tools and processes to stop errors becoming problems.
I think everyone is getting mature enough to realise that this is a
better way to go. The barrier of entry to software development is always
going to remain low. Its going to get lower and lower as well. The horse
has bolted on regulation of software producers as an industry.
Regulating the individuals by means of contracts is already in place and
largely works pretty well I think. I think a good combination of
contracts and good practices is going to be how it is for a long time yet.
The thing is, that something bad happening should be blamed not on the
programmer, but on the testers, the project managers etc. Anything where
something really bad is going to happen is going to be a team effort :)
And software remains and should always remain as a field where accurate
tests of the components and the whole can ensure correctly working
functionality. Its a pretty unique thing, where you get to drive train
after car after hurricane over that bridge and see what happens....
dave
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