Reply to post:

"What does it matter that developers aren't engineers? That's not what they're there to do - they're there to write code."

I'm not going into the huge argument over whether software is engineering or not, except to say that software that duplicates the function of hardware needs to be engineered to the same standards of effectiveness and reliability. If software abstracts away hard drives so that they can, as it were, be connected to virtually, then that software needs to be engineered to the same standards as an IDE cable (remember them?).

Engineering is science applied with discipline to do with standards, consistent behaviour, documentation and planned upgrades. This has been known since the days of Whitworth, who wasa round at the same time as Babbage. You wouldn't let someone coding website markup anywhere near an engine management system, and storage is now as mission critical to businesses as ECUs and autopilots are to vehicles.