Quote:
Originally Posted by baronWastelan
That's quite funny, but is it a fair comparison? People have been been building bridges for 1000's of years, and they all do practically the same thing. A single piece of software can do 100's of different things, many of them that have never been done before.
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Mmmm... depends on your definitions of 'do' and 'things'. Modern structures are complex and require careful analysis regarding the transmission of stress to the ground, possible resonance due to wind or earth tremors etc.
The claim that computers do things that have never been done before is dubious... Alan Turing determined universally exactly what computers could do. Other mathematicians determined things that computers could *not* do -- NP complete problems etc. I don't know a massive amount about any of this, but its fair to say that Turing spoke a totally different language to software engineers.
It's reasonable to question the fairness of the jibe I made -- usually nobody need die because a computer programme crashes, unlike with collapsing bridges. Some of the excuses made by the industry don't stand up to criticism, however.
Taking the internet as an example, it was built by electronics and fibre optics specialists and jpeg/mp3 etc (all basically the same tech) made it fast, cheap and economical. Microsoft and Netscape, OTOH, bequeathed us javascript, popups and security holes. Even when I think of the internet myself I think software, but it's an illusion. The hardware basically always works reliably but its invisible. The software types control the branding and somehow come away with all the cash...
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