rk wrote:

And even in engineering, with the advent of computer tools to do the analysis
and even the design work, engineers are starting to be push button operators
and do not understand the fundamental concepts and so can not tell when the
software tools are in error (which is not infrequent, it's all proprietary
code that you are not allowed to see, examine, and verify).

I'm not certain that Open Source code would change the situation any.
I don't think an engineer is going to open the code to verify, so who
does the verification? The companies that will pay for the
verification (in house or consultant) are already (AIUI) paying for
their own code. That leaves us with the moral equivalent of slashdot
ratings, which are informal popularity ratings, not formal
evaluations.

D.
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