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godelskiHNSource author
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Thanks for this comment

Thanks for this comment. Clearly in my original comment I made I failed to articulate how useful failure analysis is for even highly mundane things. So if we take this as a post mortum then I think we can see the failure mode of my language. The big question though is if this is within reasonable bounds of noise as over emphasizing mundane examples may result in the concept not making an adequate impression on the importance of the topic. I did have a large number of points with no responses prior to receiving misinterpretations but that's a noisy metric itself so now I'm asking a third party consultant if they have any thoughts on how I can improve my communication. And not to say there aren't plenty of software engineers that do failure analysis. I mean we do have exceptions, exit codes, traces, and even QA (though many hate them). But I'm not under the impression that the idea is as ingrained in the average software engineer as it is in the average engineer. …

Original discussionI built an offline smart home181 source comments · at import
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syndicatedjellyHN

> But why are people surprised then that in most software the process is not as thorough as in aerospace or elsewhere with physical things. Outside of engineering, few people have ever even heard the phrase “risk management”, let alone understand the theory behind it. It’s really hard to argue that a developer can consider themself an engineer, when they don’t bother understanding what happens when the thing they “engineered” fails. Yes this applies to web applications too. If someone can’t access an application that gives them directions, it’s possible that they will be stranded. If a healthcare website fails to load a list of available physicians, it’s possible the user gives up and doesn’t seek medical care. The current prevailing attitude in web dev of “who cares” is really a testament to how little most web developers and real engineers have in common. Software engineers working on …

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syndicatedjellyHN

> so now I'm asking a third party consultant if they have any thoughts on how I can improve my communication. Hope this isn't too blunt, but I find your writing style to be a bit "chatty". I think you must have got the same advice I did, which is "write like you speak". For most people, the vast majority of our verbal communications are highly informal, filled with lots of slang. Verbal phrases and euphemisms don't translate very well to writing sometimes. If I were to offer advice, I'd say write shorter sentences and use simpler words. It should feel a bit uncomfortable to write like this. I feel slightly uncomfortable writing this even.

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syndicatedjellyHN

> My impression is that this is because when software harms it is often less tangible and less direct than in other engineering disciplines You're certainly on to something here. It feels easier to disassociate oneself from an ephemeral codebase whose existence vanishes entirely from your life as soon as you leave a company. Compare that with someone working on an airplane that a family member may rely on to safely transit. That's what makes it even more sad that computer science majors are shielded from all those concerns in engineering. There really should be a "software engineering" minor that delves into what the rest of the engineering world contends with.

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