🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1991Jul22.234656.12953@alphalpha.com> nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) writes:
*
*o How do you test them?  Software is not a science, it's an art.  There
*  isn't *one* way to do something, there are millions.  Who's to say which
*  is right?
*-- 

I think that a lot of software folks are flattering themselves by thinking
that they practice an art.  It can be engineering, although the rules are
not as rigid as in other disciplines.  

The big problem with software is that for the life-critical stuff a software
engineer is the last person you would want working on the problem!  Consider,
who knows more about X-Rays, a trained X-Ray technician, or Joe Programmer?
Who knows more about how planes fly, a professional pilot or Joe Programmer?

If a license is needed to program a computer for a critical system, I would
hope that the people who get the licenses are professionals in the field 
in question who have learned some programming, rather than software people
who have picked up a smattering of knowledge of the field in question.

--
"Our music is a cross between Cyndi Lauper and early SPK."

<archer@sgi.com>  Archer Sully