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This doesn't make much sense to me. Bridges, roads, sewers, pipes, etc are still around because the problems they solve haven't changed, and in the thousands of

This doesn't make much sense to me. Bridges, roads, sewers, pipes, etc are still around because the problems they solve haven't changed, and in the thousands of years we've been building bridges, we're only seeing the ones that survived, and completely missing the ones that crumbled. It seems like survivorship bias. Software is evolving because we have new problems to solve. I'd point out that Unix is 50+ years old and still going strong and used daily by millions of people. I don't get where the assumption that these are timeless structures comes from - the New York City Subway system is falling apart and in need of continual maintenance. Roads constantly fall apart and need to be re-surfaced - it's not like we use incredibly elegant long term materials, we use blacktop because it's cheap now. Bridges and tunnels are being maintained all the time.

informatimago 11y ago
Indeed; the comparison of software engineering with architecture (or other classes of engineering), notably when taking into account history, are always misled. For example, the assumption that old bridges still solve modern problems. Compare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4eM0qoUhaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4eM0qoUhaE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puente_Romano_%28M%C3%A9rida%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puente_Romano_%28M%C3%A9rida%2... On the close to 2000 years old Merida's bridge, only peatons are allowed nowadays. If you tried to run a traffic of hundreds of 30tn trucks per hour on it, it would soon fall into pieces. Also, you have to take into account the maintainance that has been added to it during the ages (for example, the banks have grown closer and the extremum piles are now under ground).