"There is science available for writing software, it just gets ignored a lot."
Another important point is software engineering is a baby among the other disciplines. So in its first half century we've had a continuous stream of pitch men selling the new silver bullet that will fix everything, forgotten in a couple years of course. Oh but that NEW scam, its the real thing, this time, yup.
Compare to civil engineering, where the Romans were making great big piles of dirt 2000 years ago. Maybe not as well as we can or as fast as we can, but institutional experience does pile up.
Something to think about as a hard sci fi setting or similar, is a couple centuries in the future, being a programmer will be about as sexy as designing municipal sewer piping, and about as much room for creativity. So we should enjoy the fun while we can.
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There is science available for writing software, it just gets ignored a lot.
From design by contract, unit testing, integration testing, static analysis, formal proofs, dependent types...
Managers are not willing to invest the required money into development practices that use the techniques above.
Most consumers are not willing to pay for quality and will rather use the software version of 1€ shops quality, if it works most of the time.
Many cowboy coders see software development practices that lead to higher quality as ivory tower advocacy that only gets in the way.
"There is science available for writing software, it just gets ignored a lot."
Another important point is software engineering is a baby among the other disciplines. So in its first half century we've had a continuous stream of pitch men selling the new silver bullet that will fix everything, forgotten in a couple years of course. Oh but that NEW scam, its the real thing, this time, yup.
Compare to civil engineering, where the Romans were making great big piles of dirt 2000 years ago. Maybe not as well as we can or as fast as we can, but institutional experience does pile up.
Something to think about as a hard sci fi setting or similar, is a couple centuries in the future, being a programmer will be about as sexy as designing municipal sewer piping, and about as much room for creativity. So we should enjoy the fun while we can.