I would be very nervous about the integrity of a bridge designed by engineers whose sole source of knowledge was a teacher who has no experience in construction or design of bridges. That’s even considering the engineers may rely on industry standards bodies like AASHTO that prescribe much of the particulars of a design.

To my knowledge, no such standards bodies exist for software, making the designs of pure theorists all the more concerning. Maybe FRAMA-C? I’m not sure if that’s equivalent to AASHTO LRFD. Given that end users have almost no way of evaluating the safety or quality of software, similar to medical or legal counsel, I would think that there is an obvious need for some kind of regulatory body. Celebrity-bloggers seems like all too common a source of best practices.