Why Software Engineering Isn’t Engineering

Re:Why Software Engineering Isn’t Engineering by lambdaelite on Sunday June 07, 2015 @11:24AM (#9674985)

> You see this sentiment come up about every few months here. We're not rigorous enough. Or we can't estimate our build time well. Or we don't have any liability. Or we don't have a codified set of morals that govern us. BS.

I don't see the BS. Coming from a traditional engineering discipline, I'd agree with each of those. The scariest to me is on professional standards and ethics: it seems to be an almost point of pride among some HN commenters that they operate outside of any formal standard. That baffles me.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Software Engineering Isn’t Engineering by falcolas on Sunday June 07, 2015 @12:02PM (#9675159)

> The scariest to me is on professional standards and ethics

OK. What standards and ethics would you recommend we adhere to?

First, do no harm? One, define harm. If I'm depriving a corporation of money by automating something for consumers, is that harm? How about if I write a clone of netcat, am I liable for its use in nefarious scanning of ports?

Thou shalt not write bugs? That would be awesome, were it possible. I can't think of many developers who wouldn't want to get to this point, assuming of course it didn't result in a 1 month project plan to write a sorting algorithm.

http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/06/extra-extra-read-...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Software Engineering Isn’t Engineering by lambdaelite on Sunday June 07, 2015 @12:11PM (#9675217)

The IEEE-CS/ACM jointly publish one: http://www.computer.org/web/education/code-of-ethics

It doesn't seem that different from other professional codes.

[ Parent | on HN ]