In plain English.

Software is still practiced more like a craft than an engineering discipline. It relies on skill, apprenticeship, and process. It is short on materials with known properties, mathematics that predicts behavior, modeling that stress-tests designs, and meaningful standards.

This talk argues:

• What engineering actually means — and how software falls short.
• What the trajectory looks like — mechanical, civil, aeronautical analogies.
• What levers move software forward — materials, math, modeling, standards, certification.
• What any working engineer can do now — without waiting for policy change.

Written for engineering leaders, QA directors, educators, and any practitioner thinking about where the profession is going.

Science · math · technology.

Engineering is the application of science, mathematics, and technology to the construction of useful things.

Software has the technology. It comes up short on the science and math — no mature predictive theory of why our systems behave as they do.

In the absence of that theory, we lean on skill and process.
That lean is the signature of a craft.

Swordsmiths vs. materials engineers.

Works until it doesn't.

Materials + math + calibration.

The challenge: typhoons. Stress-testing a completed multi-kilometer bridge is impossible.

Engineers built a 1:400 scale replica in a wind tunnel. Ran Monte Carlo simulations against storm and failure modes.

What made it possible:

• Materials with known properties.
• Mathematics of the relevant physics.
• Models calibrated against reality.
• Continuous comparison of prediction to outcome.

Software's early analogues: performance modeling, load simulation, formal methods, AI-system evaluators. Each is a piece of the same pattern.

Published, tested, reusable.

Other disciplines build with materials whose properties are published and known: strength, reactivity, melting point, fatigue curve, thermal expansion.

Software is built by combining words that get translated into CPU instructions.

We do not yet have software engineering materials.

Open-source libraries and cloud services are the start — but they mostly publish features, not behavior envelopes. The gap between "functional documentation" and "materials specification" is where our worst failures live.

UK railway bridges.

The UK railway-bridge collapses drove standardization — of materials, processes, and certifications.

Every mature engineering discipline has this inflection point. Enough catastrophic failures to force the profession to stop and codify.

Software has started this. CMMI, ISTQB, DO-178C, IEC 62304, ISO 26262. Real progress.

Still significant inconsistency across the industry. Some worry about premature standardization; others argue even imperfect standards self-correct faster than no standards at all.

Wyoming. 1907. A hundred years late.

US engineers are self-regulated like doctors and lawyers. Governments enforce.

The first US engineering-licensure law was enacted in Wyoming, 1907 — roughly a century after the profession existed — because "anyone could work as an engineer without proof of competency" was deemed unacceptable for public safety.

Software sits where Wyoming 1907 sat.

ISTQB, CSTE, various vendor specializations are the first serious attempts by the profession to demonstrate self-regulation. Not the destination. The on-ramp.

A trajectory can be rapid.

• Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk · 1903.
• Gagarin orbited Earth · 1961.
• Apollo 9 tested the lunar module · 1969.
• Space Shuttle's first orbital flight · 1981.

Under 80 years from first flight to a reusable orbital spacecraft.

The analogy isn't perfect. But the shape is clear: an engineering discipline's trajectory can be rapid once the materials, math, modeling, and standards come together.

What we're building toward.

• Craft approaches relegated to hobby and personal projects only.
• Engineering materials — standard, tested, reusable components with known and published behavior envelopes.
• Mathematics that represents software behavior with useful predictive accuracy.
• Modeling that's increasingly precise as the math matures.
• Continuously refined, meaningful standards — not checkbox compliance.
• Government recognition of reputable certifications — in development and testing.

None of these are hypothetical. All of them exist in some form today. The work is to make them the norm instead of the exception.

The profession transforms from below.

It won't transform from the top. It transforms when individual engineers, testers, and test managers insist on a little more engineering in each program they run.

• Measure before you standardize.
• Standardize before you scale.
• Write the model down.
• Compare the model to the outcome.
• Contribute to the standards you use.
• Earn the certifications that matter.
• Sponsor apprentices — graduate them into practitioners who do the same.

None of this requires waiting for a policy change.

Four to hold against.

• Software is still more craft than engineering. Observation, not attack. Accept the diagnosis before arguing about treatment.
• Process and skill are compensating for missing theory. Not wrong. Not the endpoint.
• Modeling is where testing belongs. Performance modeling, load modeling, AI evaluators — the early software wind tunnels.
• Progress is generational, and it has happened before. Kitty Hawk → orbital in 80 years. The timeline is long, not impossible.

Crafts are perfectly good for building dressers and stained-glass windows. Would you want to drive across a bridge — or fly on a plane — built by craftsmen?