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The Atlantic is running an article on the friction between the computing world and Professional Engineer societies. This discussion has been going on for a long time, and is meaningful to me personally - I quit a 10-year career as server administrator with 'engineer' in my job title when I graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree, and have since earned my Professional Engineer license. In a world where most software comes with a disclaimer of liability due to defects, where would an ethical, civic-minded programmer even practice Professional Engineering? Angry Birds probably doesn't have any responsibility to the public safety, so there's little need there; on the other hand, Google's self-driving car program is a good candidate.
I'd love to welcome the programming profession into the circle of licensed Engineers, provided that the industry manages to agree on standards of quality and accountability. I don't see the methods (such as Agile) used by programmers as a significant obstacle, either; the programming motto of "move fast and break things" (which the article wrongly decries) is echoed in the motto "fail early, fail often" that is held by many Mech Eng R&D shops. I just fear that the halting problem will be solved before any such standards become widely accepted and implemented in the industry.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday November 07 2015, @05:48PM
Making billions of dollars shows what people, as a group, value most. The Mafia makes lots of money because there's a huge demand for things which some smaller group of people have deemed "bad", namely alcoholic beverages.
By saying that making billions of dollars isn't a very good goal to strive for, you're implicitly saying that things the majority value are junk, and by extension that you know better than the majority of people about what is and isn't valuable.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday November 09 2015, @07:32PM
If you think the Mafia makes its money through alcoholic beverages, you're utterly outdated.
Also that people give money for something does not always mean they value it. It may just mean it's the alternative that sucks least. For example paying ransom money usually sucks less than what happens if you don't pay.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday November 09 2015, @11:45PM
Obviously, Prohibition v1.0 ended some time ago, but Prohibition v2.0 is still going. The Mafia makes money largely by selling stuff to people that they want to buy, but the government has deemed "bad": prostitution, drugs, gambling, etc. Of course, they also make money with protection rackets. However there, given how horrible our regular police forces are, I think maybe shutting down the police in some localities and letting the Mafia handle it isn't a bad idea.