I think I know what you mean, but could you break that down for me just in case?
And what is mission critical? Aerospace control software? Wouldn’t it be nice if all software was “mission critical”? Not all houses are skyscrapers, but all houses are designed and built to industry acceptable specs and if those specs are wrongly designed or executed incorrectly there are consequences, and rightly so I think.
> Wouldn’t it be nice if all software was “mission critical”
Nope. There are times for nice, strong houses; and there are times for chicken coops made out of duct tape, rusty steel wire and bent nails. As long as they keep chickens in, it is all fine.
It is up to management to decide what kind of structure are they going to build.
That said, there are disturbingly many cases when people don't pay attention to security, and then there are personal data leaks. The handling of personal data should be regulated, verified, and there should be severe consequences for leaks caused by negligence.
As for the rest -- let people do whatever they want. No backups? sure. 'SELECT *' on index.php? you are paying for the servers, go ahead.
> It is up to management to decide what kind of structure are they going to build.
It'd be nice if management was held more accountable when they choose duct tape/rust steel wire/bent nails construction techniques to build multi story apartment blocks instead of chicken coops. But we haven't even solved that problem for actual apartment blocks yet, so I won't be holding my breath for that accountability for software projects any time soon...
The incentives are different. Time to market and exponential growth are not the main concerns. You have financial incentives, enforced by your contract, to deliver documentation and to test every delivery under rigorous QA.
I think this friend is working on satellite software and also (counter intuitively for me) accounting software with anti-fraud semantics.
The Arduino code that blinks my festival costume blinky lights is not mission critical.
The MCAS software on a 737MAX8 should be considered mission critical, but apparently wasn't treated as such at least not by upper management or beancounters who had final say.
NASA's Mars Rover control software is mission critical, and they use coding standards, formal methods, and tools to verify its correctness.
In between is a very very wide grey area. The marketing department thinks the cross domain analytics tracking code on their website is "absolutely mission critical!", but it's built on top of a pile of other people's php and javascript that's way closer to my Arduino blinky light code than to Mars Rovers LOC-4 (Level Of Compliance) or other NASA LOC-5 and 6 code.
Quite what software should possibly be regulated like skyscrapers or houses, and what software should be unregulated like a camp ground, or when that camp ground grows into a shantytown that starts requiring house-like regulation - seems to be a thing that there are no "industry standards" for yet (at least perhaps, cynically, not beyond "maximising shareholder value" or "not leaving money on the table"...)
As you said, mission critical is not always treated as mission critical. Ariane 5 maidens launch failure was due to a software bug. Here some footage from the launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK_yguLapgA
Aero space would be considered safety critical, which implies even higher levels of rigor (and regulation). Mission critical can apply to any setting where a lot of money or other resources are at stake wrt. the software functioning correctly.
And what is mission critical? Aerospace control software? Wouldn’t it be nice if all software was “mission critical”? Not all houses are skyscrapers, but all houses are designed and built to industry acceptable specs and if those specs are wrongly designed or executed incorrectly there are consequences, and rightly so I think.