> Imagine bridges or houses were built like that. Or your surgeon was trained like that.

While I don't disagree with you in general, this does feel a bit off.

By that logic you can call the field of music immature, and all of the arts. I think the difference is that its easy to experiment without high costs.

I genuinely think that if building bridges was cheap and quick, the fastest way to learn was to try...

▲

nchagnet 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I generally agree with your point on ease of experimentation, but if we insist on calling it software engineering, then maybe the field needs to adhere to engineering principles, as the GP highlighted.

	▲	tuckerman an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I believe part of engineering isn’t over-engineering for the task at hand as well. If the costs of a “failure” are low/zero then the right thing can be to move quickly expecting some problems. I think the field could get better at knowing when costs are low (eg sometimes scalability, cheaper to change a database choice than rebuild a bridge) and where the costs are sometimes very high (eg security).