>>> I don't think that "certified experts" are proof against those kinds or problems. <<<
Not absolute proof, nor close, After all, 80,000 patients still die of iatrogenic disease (killed by the doc) after entering a hospital each year. But would you rather have surgery done by anyone who was willing to take a shot at it?
Granted, a lot of training in software engineering could happen on projects that were less critical, with an escalation of criticality matching an escalation in references, as it is in medicine and in structural engineering and piloting airplanes.
>>> It's not like building a bridge. <<<
Bridges still fall down once in a while. And building bridges wasn't always like... well, building a bridge. They had to professionalize, build a formal agreed methodology, set standards, put licensing in place...
This was all pretty recent, too. And it's still not a fixed practice. Non-linear effects of wind on bridges could only recently be modelled effectively, for instance.
But they have been able to communicate established practice through the medium of the profession. Something we should be doing, especially in the schools.
Yet year after year I work with fresh BS and MS grads that haven't a clue about the most elementary aspects of subjects like structured design, ER analysis, use case testing plans, working with others on projects, ethics, copyright, research protocols, project planning, details of modular design techniques, or any other meta aspect of established practice. That is left for them to find out on the job, while the profs, many of them with no practical experience in programming, involve them in whatever R&D or technicality is fashionable at the moment.
Professional standards would help. Real ones, with a minimum agreed curriculum, a bar exam, and agreed professional responsibilities.
This would have the side effect of engineers refusing to participate in some of the projects they work on now, because of substandard practices in those projects. Members of ACM and IEEE are supposed to do that now, but rarely do, because there is no formal professional or legal backup for them.
Cheers,
Chaz |
