3 ms·

If there ever existed a project where all the requirements were defined exhaustively and accurately up front, then I haven't heard of it.

• amelius 9y ago
  It happens in other disciplines all the time. E.g. architecture, automotive industry, ... The problem is really: we're allowing the requirements to change just because it seems possible (in software). But it leads to crappy code. Managers should understand this.
  • adrianN 9y ago
    Not allowing requirements to change like in other engineering disciplines leads to products that nobody wants or components that don't quite do what you need so that you have to implement various workarounds. Software is so tremendously successful because it's much easier to adapt it to changing requirements.
  • logicallee 9y ago
    you say >seems possible but in software a better statement is that it is possible. Once you've built a bridge you can't just raise all its base pillars by half a meter, but leave everything else the same. I mean there is literally no physical way to 'change one line of code'. Someone would have to go out there and start tearing it apart or doing something physically. In software you can certainly do that: that doesn't mean it's a good idea. But if you have good test coverage and a good architecture it's even possible for nothing to break. So it's not that it seems that way - it is that way. There are people running popular, live applications who SSH into production and change a line of code that changes live behavior. Every day this happens. So it's not just that it seems possible. It is possible. Software is just different from architecture, or the automotive industry in that regard.