I know PE licensing doesn't in general make a lot of sense of software. I read all the discussions on HN on this topic with a lot of interest. I agree it's not even a perfect system for traditional engineering.

But consider this: say you were a licensed engineer, and writing shoddy code you would face the risk of losing said license and not being able to practice in the future. Yes, even if "your boss told you to do it". You are the engineer, you are the professional, it's your ass on the line if lives are lost or damaged. Then your choice is either pushing back and risk to get fired, or don't push back but risk to lose your license.

I'm sure this change from country to country, but at least in my country you don't need to be "licensed" to be held liable because of the damage you do and you can be disqualified to do that job.

My point being that better software is not going to be written just because the people writing it is afraid of losing their license or being held liable, because in many circumstances that can already happen.

The problem here are not only the developers and the crappy code. Some people here put this thing in production knowing that it was faulty, or once they knew it didn't work as expected they did all they could to hide this for years, blaming others of their own mistakes.

And yes, I agree we need to be better. But it's very important to understand that many of the potential licensed software engineers that are already writing crappy software today and will continue to do so if licensed because they just don't know better.

Everybody just doing their job. This relates to the system that is society. When something is broken we just convince ourselves that everything is working as expected. People get hurt from it but we don't really care enough to question it and make the changes necessary to fix it.

It's a problem of management, not th developers. Either the developers were allowed or pressured into shipping a defective system

The management of society is the politicians and government. People following orders of government when something is broken... hmm, what time period did that happen?

Do you think developers should have any responsibility for the quality of their code? In this thread, I see a lot of developers who like to think of themselves as "software engineers" trying to evade responsibility in a way that would shock members of any other engineering profession.

Not saying no when you should say no is a form of laziness known as cowardice.

You can say no all you want, but it doesn't matter when your "no" gets overridden by your manager's "yes". You can even quit over it, but there's a whole line of people waiting to replace you (yes, everyone, even you, is replaceable). Lazy developers have nothing on greedy managers.

What does there being others who will do a bad thing have to do with whether I do something bad or not? Is there an opportunity cost to refusing to enact or participate in criminal or immoral acts? Should I do something like that simply because I am potentially fungible?

I can't understand that logic.

Personally, I would and I have said no to work I find immoral. I was also fired, on the spot, for saying no to something that was illegal. The company then threatened to sue me. I threatened to sue them back and they backed down, and I found another job within days that paid more because, like most people in tech, I'm in demand. That company is now dead.

We can all afford to be more choosy.