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> Software is nothing like building a house except in rare circumstances. Real world construction projects are mostly about creating linear combinations of know
by Joeri 11y ago
> Software is nothing like building a house except in rare circumstances. Real world construction projects are mostly about creating linear combinations of known things.
Have you actually built a house before? The plans never quite match up to the reality. It always takes longer than you think, and costs more. No house is exactly the same as another. Every house has bespoke parts to it. Shoddy construction happens often, and fixing the issues that result can cost more than initial construction. And then the customer changes their mind, causing costly rework that never quite fits properly into the initial design. I would say building software is very much like building a house.
- marcosdumay 11y agoYes, civil engineers use a 30% - 40% fudge factor to deal with those unforeseen costs. They often get the costs wrong, sometimes it's nearly twice more, but those times are rare. Software developers normally apply a 200% - 500% fudge factor do deal with unforeseen costs. Problem is, they are usually wrong by an order of magnitude or two, at whatever direction.
- rhizome 11y agoI'd love to know where to find more information on this kind of thing.
- fsloth 11y ago"I would say building software is very much like building a house." Yeah, it's good to remind that making anything new and not mass produced is always messy. I would still claim that software only goes more insane from that since there are very little constraints to the work and it's less understandable as a whole. House at least is bound to the basic laws of physics. One cannot mess up the local universe so that walking through any arbitrary door takes one suddenly to the toilet. In software, on the other hand, one needs to design the constraints oneself (I'm generalizing again, of course).