6 ms·

It's never about perfection, but lifting up the acceptable lower bound. Around 150 years ago, Joseph Lister had to go to great lengths to persuade surgeons to a

It's never about perfection, but lifting up the acceptable lower bound. Around 150 years ago, Joseph Lister had to go to great lengths to persuade surgeons to apply antiseptics, which seems like a no-brainer nowadays. The methods I mentioned have been well-established for decades.

jonathanstrange 4y ago
Generally, nobody forces you to use software you don't consider reliable. That's especially true if you use open source software (and if you don't, you've got other problems).
- alpaca128 4y ago
  That is technically true but in practice one has to use certain software to some degree or at least faces consequences of some software's output. Bad software has sent innocent people to prison, declared some officially dead etc without those people ever having a say in what system should be used. Unfortunately high quality software tends to be so much more expensive in various ways that almost nobody bothers. Which is understandable, but in some cases still unacceptable. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about open source software, those developers don't owe me anything and often produce better results anyway.
  - jonathanstrange 4y ago
    I agree that in some areas the bars could and probably should be set higher. While in most domains there are strict certifications (e.g. cryptography, military, banking, aviation, medical devices) there are certain grey zones in which unreliable software impacts our lives. Ideally, these gaps are closed. For example, EU legislation requires a certain amount of transparency for a system a citizen is subjected to, e.g. according to the GDPR customers have a right to know why they were given a low credit score. It's a double-edged sword because certifications are complex and sometimes expensive (e.g. FIPS certification for encryption), so smaller software companies have a hard time competing, potentially leading to more quasi-monopolies and cartels.
pjc50 4y ago
"Acceptable" is a transitive verb. Acceptable to whom? And a more subtle question: what happens below the acceptability theshold? It doesn't seem that acceptability can be driven up costlessly at zero time investment, so what this means is either "less software is produced" or "software is more expensive". (We see a version of this with the app stores, which enforce a really crude "quality filter" by banning apps)
- Joker_vD 4y ago
  "Acceptable" in not even a verb, never mind transitive.
alpaca128 4y ago
Surgery isn't learned at home, the cost of failure is so high that a certain skill level is considered the minimum. Though if you're talking about the lower bound for calling one's work "software engineering" you have a point, I think it's reasonable to expect some best practices from experienced developers. One problem seems to be how easy it is to underestimate the cost of bad software and what it takes to produce good quality. This reminds me a bit of the wildly inconsistent quality of CGI effects in today's movies, which is often the result of late changes and in turn insane deadlines, to some people VFX is magic anyway so why can't it also magically be done faster?

jonathanstrange 4y ago

Generally, nobody forces you to use software you don't consider reliable. That's especially true if you use open source software (and if you don't, you've got other problems).

alpaca128 4y ago
That is technically true but in practice one has to use certain software to some degree or at least faces consequences of some software's output. Bad software has sent innocent people to prison, declared some officially dead etc without those people ever having a say in what system should be used. Unfortunately high quality software tends to be so much more expensive in various ways that almost nobody bothers. Which is understandable, but in some cases still unacceptable. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about open source software, those developers don't owe me anything and often produce better results anyway.
- jonathanstrange 4y ago
  I agree that in some areas the bars could and probably should be set higher. While in most domains there are strict certifications (e.g. cryptography, military, banking, aviation, medical devices) there are certain grey zones in which unreliable software impacts our lives. Ideally, these gaps are closed. For example, EU legislation requires a certain amount of transparency for a system a citizen is subjected to, e.g. according to the GDPR customers have a right to know why they were given a low credit score. It's a double-edged sword because certifications are complex and sometimes expensive (e.g. FIPS certification for encryption), so smaller software companies have a hard time competing, potentially leading to more quasi-monopolies and cartels.

pjc50 4y ago

"Acceptable" is a transitive verb. Acceptable to whom? And a more subtle question: what happens below the acceptability theshold? It doesn't seem that acceptability can be driven up costlessly at zero time investment, so what this means is either "less software is produced" or "software is more expensive". (We see a version of this with the app stores, which enforce a really crude "quality filter" by banning apps)

Joker_vD 4y ago
"Acceptable" in not even a verb, never mind transitive.

alpaca128 4y ago

Surgery isn't learned at home, the cost of failure is so high that a certain skill level is considered the minimum. Though if you're talking about the lower bound for calling one's work "software engineering" you have a point, I think it's reasonable to expect some best practices from experienced developers. One problem seems to be how easy it is to underestimate the cost of bad software and what it takes to produce good quality. This reminds me a bit of the wildly inconsistent quality of CGI effects in today's movies, which is often the result of late changes and in turn insane deadlines, to some people VFX is magic anyway so why can't it also magically be done faster?