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SCdFtoday at 1:23 PM2 repliesview on HN

In most industries that need software made for them it's hard enough to get people to care about spending enough time on informal methods let alone formal ones. I simply don't think most of the industry has had the breathing room and respect for engineering for this pattern to develop.


Replies

forintitoday at 2:19 PM

I think programmers in general do not give much thought to the level of engineering required for a task.

Mostly, there's too little, but there are many cases when there's too much. I see people writing tons of tests for corporate software that will be used by a couple of people and will have to be updated regularly anyway.

Building a hut is not the same as building a skyscraper, but we don't really have guidelines for different software projects. No methodology I've ever seen distinguishes types of projects by complexity.

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another_twisttoday at 1:28 PM

I think its also about tolerance for failure. For software that must not fail or where reliability commands a premium you would be wise to invest in formal methods. Core systems at aws for example. For throwaway CRUD code its just easier to try iterations on the problem and call it a day. Its not about respect just RoI.