[apersona]

I am baffled by the original poster's claims. The original poster claims that they're tired of the millionth LISP interpreter and want software engineers to focus on "certified real TM problems", and concludes with people should play at home and work at work.

1. Except, the millionth LISP interpreter is almost definitely a hobby project, so their claim that people are screwing around at work is bogus.

2. What drives people to work on problems (in industry) isn't "what the nerds find cool", it's money. That's a capitalism problem, not a "this industry isn't controlled enough by me" problem. The most lucrative jobs are in enterprise SaaS and ads companies, do you think engineers flock there because that sounds fun?

3. The software industry isn't uniform. Medical devices ARE regulated under the medical industry, commercial airplanes ARE regulated under the aviation industry.

Has there been recent disasters in those industries due to software? Yes, and regulation gets updated. Regulation gets written with blood.

You might argue that software feels like they're the most prominent, but I argue it's because:

1. Software is relatively new

2. We are software engineers, so we take notice of software more.

Mechanical and civil engineers are not immune to human-injuring mistakes. Think of the last car recall due to mechanical failure (heck, there's one this year due to brake manufacturing issues: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a44475030/honda-acura-brak...). Or the O-ring failure in the space shuttle Challenger that caused it to explode mid-launch.

[P_I_Staker]

Yes, this is a huge flaw in his reasoning.

> The most lucrative jobs are in enterprise SaaS and ads companies, do you think engineers flock there because that sounds fun?

It's not even specific to these industries! HN has a very myopic view of the world. This is true for a number of engineering disciplines.

How many people are REALLY passionate about making trash (basically a job I held as an EE)? They pick up these manufacturing jobs, because they're reliable money makers. What was I doing? Taking a machine and creating a copy right next to it (with modifications).

Now I'm working in software and largely doing similar things. Integrations, design, architecture... basically accounting work with templates for code. I do a fair amount of embedded system design, but the software design pretty much decided.

> 3. The software industry isn't uniform. Medical devices ARE regulated under the medical industry, commercial airplanes ARE regulated under the aviation industry.

There are software safety standards, but they can be treated as suggestions.

What happens to me if I simply decide not to follow regulations? There's very little. It's comparable to legal, accounting, and other engineering work that has real consequences attached to it for doing it wrong. Loss of profession or jail time.

In Europe, more stuff requires a stamp. I work in an industry where we have these conversations. The "real developers" and the "big boy serious developers". I'm just shocked he can have such short-sighted interpretation.

The serious big boy developers have their problems too. People just have to choose either extreme side of a spectrum.