Why are we so bad at software engineering?

Re:Why are we so bad at software engineering? by victorNicollet on Thursday February 13, 2020 @06:23AM (#22316864)

It still adds up slower than many other engineering areas. A recent technical problem on my subway line (Paris Métro 6) delayed everyone by 30 minutes for about an hour. Based on average ridership figures from Wikipedia, this adds up to ~250 days lost. An article from 2016 [1] places the downtime at ~2h16 per month for that line. That's ~1000 days lost per month, for only one subway line.

[1]: http://www.leparisien.fr/info-paris-ile-de-france-oise/metro...

I'm certain that even the current Windows 10 search bug doesn't come close to that kind of impact.

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Re:Why are we so bad at software engineering? by loup-vaillant on Thursday February 13, 2020 @08:38AM (#22317608)

The subway is not the norm, it's an outlier. Most engineering projects are not nearly as important or impactful. An apt comparison would be a fairly big internet provider, a popular game (1M users, not just 10 thousands), a popular productivity suite…

I have chosen the small end of the scale, but let's think about Microsoft Word for a second. Or how much time Adobe Photoshop takes to start up.

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