content: The article still holds while you conveniently ignore part of your own quote: "that we'd never accept". There were extreme outcries in Japan when the Fukushima power plant failed, and even though it was due to an extreme case natural disaster, every single reactor in Japan was ordered to shut down. Now let's compare this to software failure. When was the last time you heard that a large scrutiny was being conducted on several similar companies when a data breach was made? The truth is that software "engineers" are not held to the same standards as traditional ones because of all the reasons the article states. You are correct only in the sense that traditional engineering /= perfection, but no one ever claimed that was the case either. The point was that software breaks and fails to a much larger extent since for most parts it's not treated as something super-serial. This doesn't necessarily mean that every aspect of software development ought to be. There are times when structural "engineering" doesn't require thorough investigation and quality (like when closing a wall that is not a supporting one) but then again we don't call that engineering, we call it bodging (the wall holds until someone wants to put up a large shelf with heavy items on it). Finding a few examples of structural failures doesn't mean that everything is shit, it means you're cherrypicking.