Engineering Disasters

"If you look at the major disasters in history, you see in retrospect a sequence of mistakes each one of >which at the time appeared to be innocent an inconsequential. Which all combined in an unfortunate way at the >time of the disaster to create a disaster." Dr. Roger L. McCarthy PE (Chairman Exponent Failure Analysis)

While watching Modern Marvels, I have been really enjoying the Engineering Disasters, the particular enjoyment lies in the fact that one can view the root cause analysis. The software engineering profession is in comparison to other engineering disciplines, such as civil engineering or aeronautical engineering is rather young (and some argue <http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/programmers-should-not-call-themselves-engineers/414271/> not a real engineering discipline, since the IEEE in some form recognizes software engineering I will too). Additionally there is little to no serious fallout from a miss of a route distribution or a variable not being in scope correctly. Of course I would like to place emphasis on the fact that some circumstances this is not true, such as the PATRIOT missile system and the time issue, or perhaps a healthcare company. There are other areas that my "serious fallout" statement does not apply, but they are the exception. If someone can't read a news site or view an advertisement everyone is still safe.

What I keep thinking is, "what will our disasters be, if we had a software engineering disaster?", there might be some outages on there and it might be very interesting. But more importantly what have we learned and as an industry what have we agreed on or put in place to prevent further disasters? If I had to immediately come in and say a few items backups and security items would be among the first. Perhaps I will make a more through list, but really as an industry as we mature I think we will arrive on more through measures. But since our industry is advancing so rapidly (far more quickly than civil engineering for example, please don't take offense, my grandfather is a civil engineer and I have great respect for him and his practice), I think that if we ratified a standard, it would quickly become out of date and would instead hold us down. This is especially true with security.

So really, maybe, our industry is unique and young, I really look forward to how it will change! But I also think we will increasingly need to be more accountable for our mistakes and acknowledge them (I also think this is a sigh of maturity in general in particular with junior and senior level engineers). Fortunately we won't be liable for a dam collapse which would kill hundreds, or a structural engineer that has a pillar collapse and thus be brought to trial for the failure. Keep in mind, what small things that we think are uncommon and just "won't happen" might cause a failure somewhere else. With those thoughts and planning, we will be better engineers! Try reading the book Web Operations <http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920000136.do> or watch a hangops video, of which I will correctly link later.