Exactly. The hallmark of any mediocre programmer and above is simple : they know the field they're writing software for. Usually pretty well. Most programmers

Exactly. The hallmark of any mediocre programmer and above is simple : they know the field they're writing software for. Usually pretty well. Most programmers I know simply demand the requirements are "clear". Unfortunately that often doesn't work, as it would require explaining half a year's worth of economic theory and then another half a year detailing a client firm's experiences selling X/manufacturing Y/... There's just no working with that. You cannot think of all the possibilities because you cannot attach reasonable chances of actually happening to anything. When starting a mission I always make a point of spending at least a few days manually solving the problem the software I write will solve. Because doing so lets me know what I know and don't know, and actually doing so informs me of both shortcuts used in practice and political problems/attitude towards automation. Without reasonably correctly assessing all of this a software design needs to get very lucky to work at all.