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I've always thought, if you can, with reasonable accuracy, predict how long it will take to build a piece of software, then it's probably already done, and you

I've always thought, if you can, with reasonable accuracy, predict how long it will take to build a piece of software, then it's probably already done, and you should just apt-get it or whatever. However, if it's something truly novel, then kind of by definition, it's impossible to predict how long it will take, because it's never been done before. Of course, there's a million shades of gray in between, but it's not like bridge building. Bridges are pretty unchanged in 1000's of years. Most software you write, should be brand new, otherwise, why do it?

BurningFrog 10y ago
> it's probably already done, and you should just apt-get it or whatever. This leads to the next quagmire: How do you reliably estimate how long it takes to find the already written software that does X?
- vmarshall23 10y ago
  Heh. How long does apt-cache search take. Kidding, and I do recall that being a real problem for most things at one point. You'd go to FreshMeat and just hope that the highest rated one was good. But, re: apt, if it gets in the main repo, then I'm hard-pressed to think I'm smarter than all those people. That said, for some classes of software, Drupal plugins and Minecraft mods come to mind, are all varying degrees of abysmal. Those take a lot longer to sort through. Things like "evidence based scheduling" and your permutations around "velocity" and burndown charts seem to help, particularly over time, but I've found no magic bullet.