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Comment by hilbert42 | Hacker News Reader

"Because for developers, this is a lovely and colorful playground. This is what they breathe and live. For end users, it's a nightmare designed by amateurs."

At last, someone who understands the problem and who can actually articulate it.

It would be nice to see the software industry become a true engineering profession like, say chemical, civil and electrical engineering but I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll not live long enough to ever see it.

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Software engineering is the only place where 'its too hard' is used as an excuse to not use superior technologies like rust, haskell, or even c++, which actually offer better discipline than many other commonly used languages.

Right, imagine say a civil engineer building a bridge saying 'I won't bother working out the actual stresses on the trusses, I'll just estimate them from an earlier job' because it's boring--unfortunately much of good engineering is very tedious and boring, the hard slog comes with the territory.

BTW, the reason I said I'd likely not live to see software development become a profession is because the same sentiments as this blog were echoed in this Scientific American article some 27 years ago and precious little has changed for the better since then:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247573088_Software'...

I think the italicized heading on page 87 sums the matter up beautifully.

"Despite 50 years of progress, the software industry remains years — perhaps decades — short of the mature engineering discipline needed to meet the demands of an information-age society"

It's true about the industry, but that is because the industry has grown faster than the profession. There is a group of software engineers who care. They're just completely overshadowed by the mind-boggling amount being produced by university programs and coder bootcamps who don't care.

Why strive for that, when we can just claim the title? (And then rationalize that we earn it by applying whatever passes for ‘rigor’ in our trade)

Sooner or later you'll be caught out. Reckon it won't be too long before AI - perhaps aided by quantum computers - will be able to disassemble your compiled code in seconds with all symbols, etc., print listings and meaningful comments.

Then we'll see who has egg on their faces! It'll be very interesting to see all the red blushes when the bugs and spaghetti code are exposed for all the world to see.

Rigor will be the order of the day when developers can no longer hide behind the obfuscation of compilation.

;-)

>It would be nice to see the software industry become a true engineering profession

What would you have us profess?

Those in the medical profession have the Hippocratic Oath

There are oaths of admission for Lawyers, different in every state, of course

Many Engineers trained in Canada wear the iron ring

Again, what would you have all of us profess?

We can't even agree on obvious things, like the fact that tabs and null terminated strings are the work of Satan. ;-)

>It would be nice to see the software industry become a true engineering profession like, say chemical, civil and electrical engineering

All paid less.

Only for now.

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