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Is Software the UFOlogy of Engineering Disciplines?

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Re: Is Software the UFOlogy of Engineering Disciplines?

#161

Post by toast0 »

tsss wrote: post #141
toast0 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This again? In general, Software Engineering is not engineering. Software Engineering is definitely Engineering. But Software Development usually doesn't practice it. I've got a degree in Computer Engineering and took SE courses and at least at the companies I've been at, we never did any of that. You can't use formal methods without a formalized specification, and I never even got a written specification of any pr…

You never got a properly dimensioned wireframe model from your UI designer? That's a specification too.

I don't do a lot of frontend work. But when I did, the mocks were almost always best case; no mocks for when there was missing data (which was often). I did work on one project with an interaction designer, which was great --- having all the flows laid out was awesome, but it was only the happy path.

Re: Is Software the UFOlogy of Engineering Disciplines?

#162

Post by sarchertech »

jiriro wrote: post #140
isodev wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really does. The pet food store app asks me for my cat’s allergies and medical conditions. Someone needs to be responsible if they fuck it up. Same with self driving cars - the whole idea of “engineering” is about quality and responsibility.

> the whole idea of “engineering” is about quality and responsibility This is hilarious :-) Making things that work has precisely zero relationship with quality or responsibilty or whatever shit you wish. Of course you can pay me anytime for quality or responsibility or whatever :)

“Quality” is subjective, so you’re correct that it’s not about quality. A tool designed with a planned lifespan of 100 hour lifespan is just as much a product of engineering as one designed to last 10k.

Responsibility though is very much is a central component of capital E Engineering. The modern profession in many ways is a direct response to big newsworthy engineering disasters.

Re: Is Software the UFOlogy of Engineering Disciplines?

#163

Post by sarchertech »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #155
apalmer wrote: post #12

This again? In general, Software Engineering is not engineering. It's not a technical issue, it's a 'software doesn't really kill people so government doesn't intervene in it'. In the case where the software is life and death it's generally developed in ways similar to 'real' engineering Fundamentally folks built building/structures without engineering, just so consistently caused death and destruction that govt step…

When a software error can simultaneously shut down hospitals, air transport, ground transport, emergency services, and telecommunications, I don't see how the design of that software system should be held to a different legal standard than the design of, say, a steam turbine at a power plant, or the electrical grid itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_CrowdStrike-related_IT_ou... > "The outage disrupted daily l…

It’s because it doesn’t directly kill a bunch of people all at once in a way that causes public outcry.

If it weren’t for the many large scale “flashy” engineering disasters that caught the attention of the average person, we wouldn’t have any of the Engineering regulations we have today.

My guess is that at some point some piece of software will kill enough people or cause a large enough economic disaster that we’ll start seriously regulating it.

Re: Is Software the UFOlogy of Engineering Disciplines?

#164

Post by [deleted] »

never_inline wrote: post #134

I tend to evaluate how well engineered a system is based on these pillars. * Reliability - Includes HA, fault-tolerance on single node, reconciliation or reliable rollback of failed transactions, ability to manually intervene if something is wrong, and observability * Security - privilege separation and defense in depth * Performance - Are basic operations fast? Are there worst case performance pathologies? Are batch…

[deleted]

Re: Is Software the UFOlogy of Engineering Disciplines?

#165

Post by cadamsdotcom »

We describe our processes and software products as having “security” or “reliability” or “high availability” but none of those are testable qualities, which is at the core of what the author is contending.

“F = m x a” is testable. If it were found to be untrue in some circumstances we could reproduce that untruth - and maybe uncover some new physics.

The measures I mentioned (security, reliability, high availability) don’t have clear failure points that multiple people can agree upon. Even if they did there’s nothing universal about those agreements therefore they have no value to a new project.

There is however something in the “meta” because utter disasters of software projects are less common (as a percentage of the number of projects in the world) than they used to be. We are learning axioms like “use of memory safe programming languages reduces human errors and that leads to safer code.”

There’s engineering, craftsmanship, and heuristics in every software engineering role. And all three exist in every project - sometimes even in every task!

We would all love to say it’s one or the other but it’s both.

Ok, when is it one and when is it the other?

Sorry to say it but we can’t even draw a line between CRUD database fetching business apps, and engineering the database itself. There’s no line - it is fuzzy and depends on the constraints your project faces.

Software engineering as we do it in 2025, is both UFOlogy and engineering. It’s one then it’s the other, at different times, with no clear distinction between the two. And sometimes a task you’re doing can even contain both types of work at once.

Re: Is Software the UFOlogy of Engineering Disciplines?

#166

Post by sarchertech »

bsoles wrote: post #145
apalmer wrote: post #12

This again? In general, Software Engineering is not engineering. It's not a technical issue, it's a 'software doesn't really kill people so government doesn't intervene in it'. In the case where the software is life and death it's generally developed in ways similar to 'real' engineering Fundamentally folks built building/structures without engineering, just so consistently caused death and destruction that govt step…

This again? You don't need a license to be an engineer. Every graduate of an engineering school at an accredited university/college IS an engineer. People seem to conflate an "engineer" with a "professional engineer". The two are not the same; the latter requires a license. At least in the US.

There are states that regulate the bare term “engineer” depending on the context.

And all states require a license to offer certain engineering services, so practically speaking in certain fields you can’t “be an engineer” without a license.

For example in most (all?) states you can’t hang up a shingle adverting yourself as an “Engineer” doing structural work without a license even if you aren’t calling yourself a “Professional Engineer”.

Re: Is Software the UFOlogy of Engineering Disciplines?

#167

Post by rcbdev »

isodev wrote: post #138
jandrewrogers wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost no physical engineering requires licensing either. Most things are YOLO-ed without a licensed engineer because it isn't required and adds little value. The issue is that software systems are qualitatively more complex than any physical system due to their intrinsic malleability. Physical systems are sufficiently simple that formal verification methods are actually tractable (and used).

Physical products require the CE mark [0], so software systems (especially the complex ones) should be able to meet the same standard because they’re used in places where bugs and glitches can cause harm. [0] https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/product-requirements/l...

The Cyber Resilience Act, conceived as a product security regulation on software, will mandate a CE mark on software products.

Re: Is Software the UFOlogy of Engineering Disciplines?

#168

Post by ge96 »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #144
ge96 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing, insulin pumps I could think of, missiles exploding on the pylon, lot of ways software can (almost) kill instantly, like that rocket that started flying sideways due to I think switching measurement units

Never heard of the rocket, but the software in at least the first two items is already developed to existing engineering standards by law.

oh it's Arian 5 integer overflow

Re: Is Software the UFOlogy of Engineering Disciplines?

#169

Post by wavemode »

marcosdumay wrote: post #152
wavemode wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, rather, you're romanticizing what "real" engineering looks like. Real engineering doesn't mean that mistakes are never made or that there are never bugs. Rather, it is that systems are tested thoroughly enough, and designed with enough failsafes and redundancy, that safety concerns are mitigated. The problem in the Boeing case was not that the software had bugs. Lots of aviation software has bugs, it's actua…

> Rather, it is that systems are tested thoroughly enough, and designed with enough failsafes and redundancy Yeah... That's one of the main reasons why engineers from most other disciplines have a lot of difficulty creating large reliable software. Testing systems and adding failsafes are not nearly enough for system reliability, and not the best way to add it to software. It's almost enough for mechanical engineerin…

> Testing systems and adding failsafes are not nearly enough for system reliability, and not the best way to add it to software.

Then what is the best way?

Re: Is Software the UFOlogy of Engineering Disciplines?

#170

Post by Normal_gaussian »

sampo wrote: post #15

> More than 20 years ago, I corresponded with famous UFO researcher Stanton T. Friedman. His central claim was that “the evidence is overwhelming that some UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft”. I don't believe in UFOs. But if I had to believe in UFOs, this would be my position: We have had modern humans for 500 000 years [1]. If it takes 10 000 years to make it from stone age to space age, we have theoretically had…

The largest obstacle to this theory being taken seriously is the lack of evidence in long term records, such as ice cores.

Our current age will show up in future ice cores as a massive spike; we affect CO2, Methane, Sulfates, and probably a lot more. Additionally we produce and have produced various synthetic compounds that will remain detectable in the environment for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions.

In order to circumvent this lack of evidence such a society would have had to had a very small footprint, taken very specific industrial steps, and had a focus on research that wasn't exploited. This is highly unlikely - most of our lessons have actually been learned from exploitation, and most of our research facilities require astounding amounts of labour to construct. This isn't even touching on the social improbability of maintaining such a society.

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