[SystemSafety] A Fire Code for Software?

[W.L. Mostia]

" From what Bill Mostia described, the solution seems obvious. Everyone should get all their software engineered in Texas."

I never proposed that what Texas was doing was "the solution" to the issue of producing high quality and safe software but rather what Texas is doing in this regard.  I personally believe it is to the better. Whether licensing of software engineer will result in improved software design is a controversial subject, particularly for those engineers who do not have a PE.  I have been a PE for 35 years and have seen both sides of the argument.  Two of the lasting effects of me getting a PE license were 1.) I should be able to provide a written technical basis of my designs and design decisions to my peers (if asked) and if I cannot, then the design is not valid and something else should be done and 2.)  I should be able to justify my designs in a court of law, if required.

Holding people responsible for their designs is part of the solution.  When engineers (and programmers, and software developers for that matter too) can hide in the background and not be held responsible for their designs allows software mediocrity and incompetence to exist, which is a danger to us all particularly in the growing ubiquitousness of software in our lives.  

William (Bill) L. Mostia, Jr. PE
ISA Fellow, FS Eng. (TUV Rheinland)
WLM Engineering Co.
281-728-3722

-----Original Message-----
From: systemsafety <systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> On Behalf Of Peter Bernard Ladkin
Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2018 4:00 PM
To: Steve Tockey <Steve.Tockey at construx.com>; systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] A Fire Code for Software?

On 2018-03-11 20:30 , Steve Tockey wrote:
> You answered the intent of my question, it is university-level 
> curriculum committees. So the new question is, are those committees aware of SE 2014?

I have been at one university since 1995, and can answer for that one: no. My university has no engineering department; in particular we have no undergraduate degree in software engineering.

> Would that help provide evidence that there is an agreed-on set of 
> topics that should be covered?
I don't know how many of our faculty and researchers are active ACM members. I would imagine: not many. I am not.

My experience of all this qualification and so forth is that everyone now thinks there is a lot of white noise coming from many directions. The curriculum design issue is straightforward: you are in a university; you have to figure out what is best for your students. We have a fair amount of what I described, but we don't have a comparative programming languages course and we don't have a compiler design course.

>From what Bill Mostia described, the solution seems obvious. Everyone should get all their software engineered in Texas.

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany MoreInCommon Je suis Charlie
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