> Do you really get mechanical or civil engineers saying "yeah, we expect there are a few fatal flaws in the design, that's just how it goes, we'll build it anyway and ship a fix if customers complain"?
Heck yes! (Well, not fatal flaws.) Any product you can think of that has been popular enough to get a second production run probably has had some design flaws corrected. Some of which were probably already known by the time that the first version shipped, and some of which were probably only discovered after real users had it in their hands for a while.
> it's part of the engineer's job to trade off reliability and cost.
Correct. But the cost includes not only the cost of the artefact but also the cost of the design. The difference with software is that design costs dominate in a way that isn't often the case with physical artefacts.
> Do you really get mechanical or civil engineers saying "yeah, we expect there are a few fatal flaws in the design, that's just how it goes, we'll build it anyway and ship a fix if customers complain"?
Heck yes! (Well, not fatal flaws.) Any product you can think of that has been popular enough to get a second production run probably has had some design flaws corrected. Some of which were probably already known by the time that the first version shipped, and some of which were probably only discovered after real users had it in their hands for a while.
> it's part of the engineer's job to trade off reliability and cost.
Correct. But the cost includes not only the cost of the artefact but also the cost of the design. The difference with software is that design costs dominate in a way that isn't often the case with physical artefacts.