I see that you maybe skimmed it a little too fast.

It is because software plays a critical role in society that it needs to be done by engineers; but it largely isn't, and it shows.

It definitely shows: in my uni I had a professor (pupil of Dijkstra) who we thought was very elitist (not so weird considering his pedigree) ; he said the world will be a bad place if we continue the bad software practices and was all for allowing (!) non engineers to make games and ‘fun things’ but not anything that actually does anything that could lose money or health if done badly. I have not spoken with him for a while but he must be crying every night about the JS uprising.

20+ years further, I am starting to agree with many of his points.

With most engineering there are standards and math is the main constant. Software is more akin to baking you know what to make but how you make it will differ (largely because of different programing languages) as does the taste of the intended customer.

Yep, and most of those applications have a certification attached, "Functional Safety Engineer", which most of of Silicon Valley don't seem to know exists.

It is a way of archtitecting systems building software, sometimes quite trivial in terms of "code lines" to an attempted known quality which suits the consequences of failing.

You generally only use it when the result will be litigation around fatalities or permanently disabling injuries, so this just proves the whole point - some software needs engineering, some software is better to produce as quickly as possible and see where it goes.

Also software powers your phone and more importantly the autocorrect feature.

You can edit your posts, you know. Or delete them.

i was using an iphone app at the time that didn't provide the functionality.