How Good Is Good Enough?
Standard of Practice
- Accepted practices of the field (e.g., testing, debugging)
- Reflect the “best” practices known
- Change over time as our knowledge changes and (hopefully!) improves
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If standard practices NOT used and the system fails, then we cry negligence! (e.g., when a building that wasn’t built to standard specs crumbles during a small earthquake)
However, if standard practices are used and the system fails, then we don’t hold the engineers accountable (e.g., when a building that was built to standard specs crumbles during a 9.8 earthquake)