We (humanity) know how to make reliable software. This is knowledge that exists. It is even put into practice, in a few places. Mostly aviation and medical equipment, fields where work must be Certified before it can be sold.
Building codes are ubiquitous. Pretty much all construction that happens in a city must meet building codes.
Do you know who writes building codes?
Insurance companies
Under capitalism, the solution to making buildings safe (to the extent that they are) is something called "liability," a system by which fuck-ups are converted into negative money. And "insurance," a system by which potential future negative money ("risk") is turned into fixed immediate negative money.
There is basically no liability for bad software. Oh you fucked up and lost approximately EVERY social security number from a simple, avoidable bug? The then-current1 framing of liability was not able to stick any "harm" other than the cost of credit monitoring for a year. The software you paid for sucks ass? Actually just not a fuckin' problem at all. The software you paid for starts sucking ass after you bought it? Meh.
It's simple: writing good software takes more time, which means more money. There are building codes for software, they absolutely will not get used if they cost more than not using them. And they do cost more. Review, documentation, tests, static checks, whatever, it takes times.
On the other hand, scrum and agile are free. So that's what you get instead, the management equivalent of healing crystals.
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Since the Equifax breach, California passed CCPA which among other things, proclaims an explicit liability of $150-$1,000 per person for a data breach.
yes but i also was implying software inspectors, and I suppose, actual software liability.
it wouldn't be pretty but construction wasn't either
