Maybe a small percent of software is written for life-critical systems. That's because software is a huge market. But a growing percent of life-critical systems rely on software. How many adverse outcomes (even death) are you willing to accept caused by programming failures?
You know, a big part of the prosecution's evidence in the Casey Anthony trial turned out to be false; it was due to faulty software. She could have been imprisoned due to a software bug! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Anthony#Evidence
Now consider that anybody can call themselves a software engineer without even picking up a book. Next time your life hangs on the proper functioning of some computer system, think about that.
You know, a big part of the prosecution's evidence in the Casey Anthony trial turned out to be false; it was due to faulty software. She could have been imprisoned due to a software bug! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Anthony#Evidence
Now consider that anybody can call themselves a software engineer without even picking up a book. Next time your life hangs on the proper functioning of some computer system, think about that.