Software was definitely part of the issue.
Any competent engineer would raise moral and ethical questions when working on software that is "mission ciritical". Causing a passenger plane to continually go into a nose dive because of data coming from a single sensor is absolutely ludicrous. Just because the software was horribly designed, doesn't mean it isn't a software issue.
1. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/a-lac...