External audits are already required for finances. Safety critical systems are even more important and should be subject to even more scrutiny as a result.
We're still arguing over "goto considered harmful", "the billion dollar mistake" and how toolchains influence code-safety-behavior.
And there exists a class of CASE tools from the '90s that, while being somewhat clunky, addressed some of the transparency issues. But those are hardly even relevant any more.
And to make it worse - the final configuration of the system matters just as much as whether the code bases for the individual nodes have passed an audit. This is especially true of CAN networks.
Automobiles are going along that curve too. Maybe this whole VW scandal is an indication of this change?
edit and the Toyota firmware scandal in 2013 has similar implications: http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-toyota-damage...
Most of the complexity is in the messages passed between systems. In a code audit it's fine to remove sending tag X by system A but then you find out when you hit prod system B used tag X and now it's not there which causes a problem in system C. And that would be a simplified example.
I'd be disturbed by any outsider claiming they understand the dynamics of multiple systems with millions of lines of code which often have feedback loops.
Source: I don't work for a bank, but have worked in electronic trading for the past 8 years and work directly with the (in)competent tech teams from other banks to clear and reconcile trading bits.
Banks might not be the most competent at web programming, but they higher a ridiculous number of awesome security folks. I would still put them behind Apple or Google in their given domains, but many banks have pretty robust technical systems for their domain.
Maybe that's changed recently but still, firewalls won't help you when somebody brute forces your users' passwords in 10 minutes.
Are you implying that using old technology makes it somehow incompetent? I don't know about you, but I absolutely do not want my financial institutions to be running their risk analysis software in Node just because someone wants to try it out.
Culturally there are two things make finance different. One is that it is a hideously conservative and risk adverse. AS/400's are used because they are well understood, very reliable, and supported by someone other than an attention deficit teenager in a bedroom.
Second is that mainstream finance doesn't see itself as a technology industry. There are areas like quant investment and high frequency trading that are, but most finance companies still look at technology as a line item on the budget rather than the foundation that their business is based on. This is changing slowly (see one) but will mostly likely require an external disruption to push change through any quicker.
Regardless, there aren't formal controls in place. Otherwise issues like Knight Capital [1] wouldn't have happened.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group#2012_stoc...
If an architect is asked to design a bridge that isn't safe they can refuse, secure in the knowledge they can't be replaced with someone willing to do it, as no licensed architect will knowingly design an unsafe bridge.
Of course, a licensing scheme would probably have a bunch of disadvantages.
One other aspect which might be even stronger would be if the professional organization had a role not unlike a union in protecting its members’ professional decisions. Imagine if you worked at VW and your boss told you to make a change which affected safety, emissions, etc. – how different might your reaction be if you know that if you refused or reported it to the appropriate regulators and there were repercussions the Bitpackers Guild could provide legal representation and expert witnesses for you, stage a strike where no licensed engineer would work for an irresponsible company, or simply ensure a lot of publicity? Suddenly it's not “go lean on Sally until she gives the engineering sign-off. She can't afford to quit until her kid's out of college” but “do we want a team of professional engineers to hold a press conference saying we're cutting corners over our experts' judgement?”
There are certainly potential downsides but … anyone who drives a car, uses medical equipment, etc. might reasonably conclude they're worth it, particularly if the system was structured to focus on transparency and due process rather than the pathology some unions are prone to where members are always defended even when they're in the wrong.
Sure, as per the construction industry.
Or perhaps simply the threat of being prosecuted for manslaughter or bodily harm, etc?
If I am an employee of the company, and someone else is telling me what to do for my job, and particularly if they are telling me how to do my job, they must necessarily share responsibility for anything that I do pursuant to obeying those instructions.
And threat of retribution leads to stupid practices:
public void CoverYourAss()
{
try
{
int x = 0;
}
catch
{
throw;
}
}
You'd better believe I was sending out resumes the day I found out about that.
I can only imagine how bad it would be if the penalty was to be fired plus arrested and/or sued.
A defeat device does not get installed accidentally. It's not like a mutation propagating through evolution of living things. Someone decided to put it there, and someone got paid to do it. There was an additional requirement added, one that had no official test coverage. It was to increase fuel economy and produce more pollution when no one was paying attention to the emissions.
As far as the developers were concerned, they did everything right. They built the code their employers asked them to build. It passed the official tests. This was a triumph; I'm making a note here: "huge success!"
The developers worked for the automakers, not the testers or the public. They did what VW wanted, which was to game the system to make more money. You're not ever going to do more than start an arms race as long as the developer is taking orders (and getting hired or fired) by the guy who just wants to sell more cars.