It's not just about estimating. I wish people would recognize that software development in its entirety doesn't fit into the "industrial mass production scheme". We pretend that it's plannable, even put estimates on it. A single unforseen issue may require a rewrite or redesign and cost you weeks or months. It is not possible to put a handle on software development in the same way as when building the 100th instance of the same car. It just doesn't work.
30+ years of tech, retired from an identity intelligence company, now part-time with an insurance broker.
Dev community mod - mostly light gardening & weeding out spam :)
Well put, and the driving force behind a number of other software engineering practices that attempt to limit some of the really big impacts of change, practices such as decoupling, evolutionary design and microservice architectures (rapidly turning into a new philosophy that reaches way beyond technical sphere - officially a good thing IMO!)
Yes, thank goodness we have architectural patterns and other things to keep programmers sane. However, it's never a guarantee that things will get done in time. There is always an unknown element to software development, otherwise an existing solution would be used instead of developing something new.
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
It's not just about estimating. I wish people would recognize that software development in its entirety doesn't fit into the "industrial mass production scheme". We pretend that it's plannable, even put estimates on it. A single unforseen issue may require a rewrite or redesign and cost you weeks or months. It is not possible to put a handle on software development in the same way as when building the 100th instance of the same car. It just doesn't work.
Thanks Martin, I like your attitude!
Well put, and the driving force behind a number of other software engineering practices that attempt to limit some of the really big impacts of change, practices such as decoupling, evolutionary design and microservice architectures (rapidly turning into a new philosophy that reaches way beyond technical sphere - officially a good thing IMO!)
Yes, thank goodness we have architectural patterns and other things to keep programmers sane. However, it's never a guarantee that things will get done in time. There is always an unknown element to software development, otherwise an existing solution would be used instead of developing something new.