Do we really? I feel like the age of "the buck stops here" ended about 30 years ago.
Engineers have to sign off that things like bridges use sound engineering principles. We could require the same of software engineers, but it would jack up the price of software, being software engineers would require much more vetting before they sign because their license would be on the line. How much more do you want to pay for software?
It depends. Is that software running some shitty web app, or my car?
The cars are probably running on shitty web apps :-)
Touché. Either way, I’d be happy to pay more for software in applications that are relatively important, and less concerned about software that doesn’t have some bearing on whether I live or die. In the end though, won’t there have to be something like what bridge builders have? If we imagine a future of self driving cars, however distant, it seems almost inevitable.
I've asked people to draft up sample legislation for such, and it becomes a nightmare to cover everything. Software usually has more "operational variations" (conditionals) than hardware or physical objects such that extrapolating physical engineering to software doesn't appear to work well.
That's written by Hannah Fry -- often seen on Numberphile on YouTube.