“The software security industry today is at about the same stage as the auto industry was in 1930" ... "it looks fast, goes nice but in an accident you die.” ... "The major shortfall is absence of assurance (or safety) mechanisms in software. If my car crashed as often as my computer does, I would be dead by now.” -- Brian Snow, Former Technical Director of the NSA, We Need Assurance http://www.research.att.com/talks_and_events/2008_distinguis...
“Most programmers think that getting run-time errors, and then using a debugger to find and fix those errors, is the normal way to program. They aren't aware that many of those errors can be detected by the compiler. And those that are aware, don't necessarily like that, because repairing bugs is challenging, and, well, sorta fun.
You are not giving a programmer good news when you tell him that he'll get fewer bugs, and that he'll have to do less debugging. Basically, we still live in the dark ages of programming, not unlike the time engineers were learning about boiler technology by figuring out why a boiler exploded, scalding people to death (remember the Therac-25?). People will probably have to die in order for "software engineering" to be a true engineering profession, instead of the buzzword that it is today. Sad but true.” -- Mathew Heaney
As someone said here on HN, it took two major disasters for people in the Netherlands to build coastal defence structures. We only seem to learn from disasters.