I like to read and watch about engineering and aviation. I'm often left in awe at the level of precision and thought that appears commonplace in these fields. Things aren't left to guesswork, everything is carefully planned, processes are designed and respected. And I wonder if software engineering can ever be like this.

Sure, those fields make mistakes, but they learn and improve. As a result, barring phobias, you can get on a plane that travels at 1000kph and feel safer than you would in a car.

Could software engineering ever look like aviation? Is it possible to write software with such thought and care that it will live 100 years? Could we ever make it commonplace that a backend service has an uptime of 99.99999%? Does it make sense to have 'margins of safety' for systems to perform beyond expectations? Can we hold ourselves responsible for consequences, and learn together when it goes wrong?

To me, it feels like software right now is as hard of a science as psychology. So practically not at all. Much like psychology, it's different to reproduce results, even in a strictly technical sense. Building software also appears to me to be strongly influenced by sociological effects.

I think many will agree that CS education does very little to aid in the development of software in the real world. I've heard of Software Engineering courses but I don't really know what they involve, or whether they would broadly benefit the industry for developers to have.