alt Hacker NewsHow many programmers operate under that kind of regulatory and operational constraint regime? I think most don’t.
(In interesting ways this is programming’s greatest boon and curse: if we treated it more like building bridges or cars, the world would be a very different place.)
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While there are for sure a lot of programming jobs that don't touch anything "important", like making dime a dozen websites or apps, I think you underestimate the number of things that need some form of higher quality control.
The level of quality needed (or imposed) will vary. It is a wide spectrum from dealing with banking/transactions (money at risk) to brake controllers and auto pilots (human lives at risk). But there is a lot of this, all over the world.
I work somewhere in the middle (rather slow but extremely heavy industrial equipment, where emergency stop is always a safe if costly option). There are domains where emergency stop is not a thing though: some systems on an aircraft in flight, a pacemaker, etc.
My point is though, that there is a ton of code where stakes are higher than "oops, I guess we will fix it next sprint". And while not all of that have regulatory constraints, sometimes a company realises that the financial cost of issues significant enough that it is worth holding themselves to higher standards anyway.
Any coder with experience or ability imagines a world where software architects are regulated the way real architects are, and acts accordingly.
I mean, this was drilled into me at uni — that software was not likely to escape regulation forever and that you can't know with certainty how all the code you're writing will be used when you're not observing the use.
For example, under what constraint regime should the calculator app bundled with an OS be written? It's just a little bundled toy app. Until someone under pressure uses it to calculate a medicine dose, expecting it to be a calculator like it says.
Perhaps this gives away my age more than anything else.
That's why I said "that you can use AND meets regulation". All software on average.
I think most do. You often sees that OSS often provide a disclaimer that they’re not liable for damages. You can’t easily do that when you provide a paid service. B2B often have SLA contracts that usually keeps everyone on their toes and not sling bugs right and left.
Touch billing, touch medical data, be at a B2B company that needs to catch all the ISOs to have a chance to land bigger contracts. I don't think it's uncommon.