Nah, in the software world, the truth is QA is where the people who can't get jobs as programmers end up. I've seen testers go on to become programmers, but I've never seen a programmer become a tester. Maybe it's different for real-time or life-critical systems, sure, but I can confidently say this is how it is in web development.

> Software QA when actually practiced is more advanced now than airline QA.

...eh, I think "when actually practiced" is doing a lot of carrying there.

What do you mean by "actually practiced".

Outside of the aerospace and healthcare industries, I'm not sure there are many software shops that are doing QA to a level I would like to trust anyone's life with.

what does advanced mean when comparing things so unlike from each other?

also software is the least likely comparison I would have made; software quality is a shit-show on a general level, and the vast public is quite aware of this every time a subway timeboard blue-screens or gets frozen on an AMI screen, or the POS machine that they're forced to interact with at work does something equally as stupid.