Professional Engineer licensure to be able to actually charge for software (this carves out exception for FOSS and freeware) could raise the costs enough to make this kind of software engineering viable. The problem today is competitors will iterate with piles of temporary solutions and eat your lunch while you're still designing your abstractions. If they got sued into oblivion for shipping broken crap, they wouldn't be so quick to iterate on junk!
PE licensure could also foster a security culture in software like none other, as no PE is going to put his fortunes on the line to save a buck skipping formal verifications and avoiding inconvenient best practices!
> Professional Engineer licensure to be able to actually charge for software (this carves out exception for FOSS and freeware) could raise the costs enough to make this kind of software engineering viable.
You would almost certainly see an increase of in-house software developers and consultants where the code is never charged for, but is developed as it always has been. A few big companies like Microsoft and IBM would get certified and smaller software companies would be driven out of existence entirely.
There would definitely not be a golden age of rigorous software.
Law may be part of the solution, but overall we need a culture of demanding tailored demos. If you ask an average SaaS, "show me how this can produce value in my environment before I buy in", they may be incredulous and expose that it will take months/years of effort to get it properly integrated.
OTOH there are many genuinely great products that don't require massive upfront effort to start producing value. Demanding tailored demos can help you separate the wheat from the chaff.
I would love for the U.S. to standardize software engineering like electrical engineers. It wouldn't change that much, as most companies would end up switching to "developers", but it would make it clear when a business wants some serious problem solving and not just churning out half-baked features as fast as possible.
PE licensure could also foster a security culture in software like none other, as no PE is going to put his fortunes on the line to save a buck skipping formal verifications and avoiding inconvenient best practices!