Comment by bumby

I didn’t downvote but I’ll weigh in on why I disagree.

The glib answer is “because it’s worth it.” As software interfaces with more and more of our lives, managing the risks becomes increasingly important.

Imagine if I transported you back 150 years to when the industrial revolution and steam power were just starting to take hold. At that time there were no consensus standards about what makes a mechanical system “good”; it was much more art than science. The numbers of mishaps and the reliability reflected this. However, as our knowledge grew we not only learned about what latent risks were posed by, say, a boiler in your home but we also began to define what is an acceptable design risk. There’s still art involved, but the science we learned (and continue to learn) provides the guardrails. The Wild West of design practice is no longer acceptable due to the risk it incurs.