[SystemSafety] Collected stopgap measures

[Derek M Jones]

Martyn,

> I think this discussion is missing the point.

It certainly is.

Where is the discussion of economics and the primary purpose of
writing software, i.e., maximize return on investment?

> To summarise: Paul Sherwood observed that most successful software
> lacked the basic requirements of a professional engineering design
> process, specifically documented requirements or documented design. He

The lesson to learn here is that successful software does not need
basic requirements of a professional engineering design process.

> also said that in his opinion this was not the right way to develop
> software, especially for safety functions. He further observed that some

We seem to be confounding general software and software for safety
functions.

General software has a short lifetime and it is not cost effective
to invest too much up front:
https://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2017/04/20/average-maintenancedevelopment-cost-ratio-is-less-than-one/

> I would like the discussion to focus on what we might be able to do to
> radically improve software engineering standards across industry, when

Reduce competition (so it becomes profitable to invest more in software,
because it has a longer lifetime) and start throwing people in jail when
software fails.

What other effective incentives are there?

-- 
Derek M. Jones           Software analysis
tel: +44 (0)1252 520667  blog:shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com