What's with your comment about the Toyota auto? As I understand there's a hell of a lot more regulation, forcing automobile product time lines to be naturally longer.
"On a cyclomatic-complexity scale, a rating of 10 is considered workable code, with 15 being the upper limit for some exceptional cases. Toyota’s code had dozens upon dozens of functions that rated higher than 50. Tellingly, the throttle-angle sensor function scored more than 100, making it completely and utterly untestable."
http://www.eejournal.com/archives/articles/20131127-toyota/
Michael Barr was the engineer that was able to sit down with the Toyota engine code during the "unintended acceleration" lawsuit and determine what NASA could not: that the code was a wreck:
http://embeddedgurus.com/barr-code/2013/10/an-update-on-toyo...
Like I said. Bubble gum and duct tape.
I don't know about Toyota specifically, but I work for a regulated sector, and the end result is that we generate documented and ISO 9001:2000 - compliant duct tape and bubble gum :P .
The existence of false positives doesn't mean the whole exercise is pointless.
In the particular company I work for (financial sector), there has been an increase in regulation and auditing of security practices. They're still really bad, you've seen endless posts here decrying the awfulness of some banking security practices. The worst thing is, they've probably been audited and made to pass some kind of regulatory standard, and the very fact they had to go through all that makes it harder to change (even if they're awful) since managament isn't willing to authorize it, especially since it doesn't affect the bottom line.
If more people have to resign (like the Target CEO), maybe things will change, but I suspect IT people will become scapegoats instead.
You can lead a horse to water...
It does seem to be not that hard to attain a certification.
There is no strict quality or safety (or aesthetic, for that matter) regulation for the entertainment/climate control system user interfaces.
(In case you've ever wondered: yes, these screens do often show information from the engine computer. For example, the 2nd generation Prius's center console screen shows live information about the hybrid system. But that information is pretty much always obtained from a read-only connection to the CAN bus.)
It would be less notable, though, if not for the contributions that Toyota brought to the craft, which are basically the same that today's developers apply so pridefully in their work.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban