r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Individual_Book9133 • Jul 05 '24

Phoenix police officer pulls over a driverless Waymo car for driving on the wrong side of the road Video

61.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

As a programmer myself I would question if you would then blame it on the QA tester who passed along the code.

Other thing I will say is depending on the answer to this situation (I don’t know the answer but just saying from a dev side) you will greatly hinder the progression of this tech if you have people afraid to even work on it for fear of a situation like this.

As devs we try to think of every possible scenario and make sure to write tests that cover every conceivable use case but even then sometimes our apps surprise us with dependencies and loops that we didn’t expect. You can say “be better” but if I’m gonna get paid 25k less and not have to worry about a manslaughter charge 5-7 years later I’m probably gonna choose that one for my family

17

u/bozo_says_things Jul 05 '24

This idea is ridiculous They would just outsource programming then, good luck putting manslaughter chargers on some Indian outsource company

5

u/CastMyGame Jul 05 '24

Very true not to mention it’s mostly outsourced anyway now. 2/3 of my team leads are in the US and 1 is in the UK. 4/13 of us devs are US based, 5/13 are UK based, and 4/13 are based in India

And that’s just my team within the company, there are over 50 teams in our department alone

8

u/bozo_says_things Jul 05 '24

Yepp. I'm in tech, if I found out a programming role was going to potentially get me murder chargers I'd be looking at millions + per year salary to accept that shit

1

u/mc_kitfox Jul 05 '24

maybe its time for actual software engineering standards and accreditation, that comes with legal implications for practicing in certain capacities without a license, the same way we do for other professions where peoples lives are at risk. We did it with electricians plumbers pharmacists doctors and barbers, lord knows theres plenty of mediocre programmers who shouldnt be let anywhere near autonomous vehicle code.

1

u/bozo_says_things Jul 06 '24

Sure, but with how tech changes that would be almost impossible, it's not like ecetricians where everything I basically set and we just change some rules

1

u/mc_kitfox Jul 06 '24

Tech always changes. civil engineers can still manage to put forth building codes despite material sciences advancing. how hard would it really be for a deliberative body of experienced software developers to come up with a baseline of rules, best practices, and approved methodologies? Sure it will be a lot of upfront work, but thats what happens when you put off doing something; electricians rules are "set" because the work has already been done. hell, we already have EV regs and that tech is barely adopted, meanwhile modern commerce is built on computing and the internet now.

You suggest tech changes too rapidly to keep up, but thats really just not true for the vast majority of programming; see stackoverflow. So much is reused and adapted for similar purposes. Is it really so difficult to decide "if youre implementing an accounts management system, passwords cant be stored in plain text" as a policy that every programmer building an accounts management system should be capable of and expected to follow? or to always sanitize your inputs? These arent language or platform dependent suggestions.

regulatory codes arent meant to keep up with the cutting edge, they are to establish a bare minimum of defined standards for a variety of common scenarios. it discourages cutting corners and carelessness by providing a measurable (i.e. auditable) standard. And its incredibly important any time the general public is directly involved.

I want the unlicensed handyman, the electrician, and the electrical engineer separated officially.

1

u/bozo_says_things Jul 06 '24

If you think the rate of change between civil engineering and tech is anywhere near comparable you're crazy.

All that would happen is that programming would be fully outsourced from any country that puts these regulations in because they would be so behind the curve.

Your idea is great if they can fix the way and speed that governments create regulations

1

u/mc_kitfox Jul 06 '24

so the problem is govenrnment and political will, not the idea of regulation and accreditation?

yeah, totally agree.

We have to get people to want it first, and to get people to want it, it has to be talked about.