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points by NelsonMinar 1 day ago | 0 comments

What is wrong with software engineers that we keep making really stupid basic mistakes like this? Sometimes I think programming should require licensing and regular testing.

[–] anonymous908213 1 day ago

We direly need to split things into a licensed engineering field which is necessary for working on security- and reliability-critical systems, and a generic unlicensed software developer field where people can screw around with their 1000 dependency JS frontends to their hearts' content. The two should not be conflated and yet so easily are.

[–] greggsy 1 day ago

Certification do exist for engineers, and various industries and governments impose their own certification programs on platforms and software before they’re authorised for use.

Each with varying degrees of trust. The outcome is never perfect, but that’s not their purpose.

[–] nyargh 1 day ago

Credentialism is not a solution, it will just get gamed too. Indian diploma mills and mega IT consultancies pump out thousands of "qualified" engineers every year.

Every hiring manager worth their salt has caught at least one completely incompetent applicant with a CV full of certifications.

[–] GoblinSlayer 20 hours ago

Maybe certifications are different? A certified Electron engineer might just read the tutorial how to spend zero effort on apps.

[–] asveikau 1 day ago

One of the problems with cryptography implementations is that a bad one will be indistinguishable from a good one on the surface level. Totally broken crypto will superficially look and work as if it it works, and most people won't look deeply. This has been commented upon for years.

[–] LeoPanthera 1 day ago

This is partly why I'm not too worried about AI slopcode.

The human bar is not that high.

I would much rather have rigorous testing than a filter based on the origin of the code.

[–] hansvm 1 day ago

What's your method for implementing rigorous testing while using AI?

[–] nyargh 1 day ago

Testing doesn't even need to be that rigorous for humans, it's easy to spot someone who is lying about the depth of their experience with a 15 minute conversation.

For AI this will be impossible, however.

If you're talking about testing of code, well "tests can only prove the presence of bugs, not their absence"

[–] rsalus 1 day ago

I think it's safe to assume anything associated with PDFs is radioactive.

[–] HackerThemAll 1 day ago

Those are not the "software engineers" but coders, those who like to say that the university degree doesn't add anything in programming.

[–] anonymous908213 1 day ago

University degrees are not the difference between an engineer and a developer, universities have churned out millions of people who don't care about programming and have no idea what they're doing, who are just following the script with as little effort as possible because they were told it was the easiest way to make a lot of money.

[–] adrianN 1 day ago

You can get through a Computer Science degree with just a few thousand lines of code if you focus on theory courses.

[–] thin_carapace 1 day ago

a small wonder the wunderkinds of computer science were at all capable given their lack of computer science degrees

[–] gsich 1 day ago

one and the same