"because software rarely kills" Depends on what you mean by rarely. Therac-25 was extremely dangerous due to a software bug. And this was over 40 years ago.

Industrial robot accidents are a lot more common than needed and almost all are due to software "problems" (bad path planning, bad safety implementation, or just bugs in the control system software)

Yes these things kill less than guns, or cars, or cranes, etc. But they still have affect in a lot of those accidents.

There are very few things anymore that don't have some kind of logic built into them. Be it software or analog logic, it was still "programmed" or designed. If there was something missed in design, that can easily have adverse affects that can lead to accidents and death not immediately attributed to the software.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

I was comparing it to civil or mechanical engineering. I agree that programming/software is growing and "infiltrating" our lives. That's why I think it will become a licensed/certified term in the future. Software engineer will require a cert and some products will require certified engineers. Whereas web apps developers (most likely) will not use that title most of the time and we will just bifurcate those who work on "critical software" and those that do not.