Hacker News Reader

Comment by sigmar | Hacker News Reader

>Since there is no real understanding of what that "engineering" is, there can't be a body of standards to which qualify and license.

The definition of engineer is NOT someone licensed and liable. I'm not sure where you got that idea.

The definition of engineering is the application of science and mathematics to solving everyday problems.

View on HN

For a Civil Engineer to build a bridge that collapses, he has to be licensed and will be liable because there are standards to follow (strength of materials, calculus, etc). No such thing exists for software.

No such thing exists for software.

Could you be more specific then about what part of following DO-178C guidelines and FAA certification process you find inadequate, such that, "no such thing exists for software"?

I do not mean to belabor the point, but am genuinely curious what you might find to be an acceptable level of rigor for software. [EDIT: or perhaps you literally mean that no such level could possibly exist?]

It could, but it would require a compatible budget. Now how many companies that develop software (so I include the myriad of financial, healthcare, etc companies that create their own enterprise software) would do that? For example, take Bloomberg that develops the famous Terminal. How much software engineering is in that product (I can't tell, I never worked for them) but I would guess it is much less than DO-178C. So "acceptable" can mean one thing for the academic community and quite another for the real life companies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com