I still would argue that medical is moving much slower than software. I work in medical devices and simple experiments can take years to get done once humans are involved. In software we would get the result in a few days or weeks. I am not advocating easing the restrictions in human experimentation but these rules definitely slow down progress.
I am not advocating easing the restrictions in human experimentation but these rules definitely slow down progress.
They surely slow down the work, but whether they slow down useful progress is a different question. Given the amount of time and money that depend on software systems today, as well as the more general effect of software on our quality of life, poor quality software costs society as a whole a great deal. If we built our software more slowly and carefully but also with higher reliability and fewer issues with security, privacy and so on, would we really be worse off?
"If we built our software more slowly and carefully but also with higher reliability and fewer issues with security, privacy and so on, would we really be worse off?"
Probably not. Personally I often enjoy the Wild West attitude of a lot of software development but on the other hand this industry has a really short memory and reinvents the wheel every few years. So yes, it would probably be a good idea if we held ourselves to higher standards and adopted best practices that often have been around for a long time.
