On 9/16/14 9:14 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > As much as I don't like the idea of licensing, when it comes to EE and > Computer Science - a few recent software-related air mishaps have > started to convince me that maybe, just maybe, we should have > something like professional engineering licenses for folks who design > life/safety/mission-critical things. At the very least it adds some > level of accountability. Maybe my previous comment about culpability may have more bearing than I thought.
One thinks of the cases of a small ooops being magnified. 1) One of our spacecraft (Gemini I think) came in for splashdown more than 700 miles from the planned target because the person (maybe a professional) who wrote the software "assumed" that a day was merely 24 hours long. 2) One of our other spacecraft did what's referred to as "auguring in" to Mars because the person who wrote the landing subroutine didn't convert from meters to feet (or vice versa). I am of the opinion that what we do can't be considered a real "profession" if these things go on without ramifications or (I can't think of the correct word here) "punishments" for making mistakes. >> code of ethics may be part and parcel of an organized profession, but >> a code of ethics doesn't make a profession (especially when it can't >> be enforced by excluding those who don't comply) Agreed. Wow! My delete key works more than once! -- << MCT >> Michael C Tiernan. http://www.linkedin.com/in/mtiernan Non Impediti Ratione Cogatationis Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. -Robert A. Heinlein _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list Tech@lists.lopsa.org https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
