> but before that you have to go through several iterations of failure with a bunch of costly entitled developers before you get something which sort of approxi

> but before that you have to go through several iterations of failure with a bunch of costly entitled developers before you get something which sort of approximates what you wanted and is so internally broken its almost impossible to extend This is too often true, subject to the following observations: - Project failure is almost always a management failure (no citations needed, really), because: - The thing to be built is poorly conceived and explained by the leadership/stakeholders, who are seldom the devs - The delivery schedule is wildly optimistic or infeasible, because unrealistic promises were made to customers or investors - The operational parameters of the system (peak users, load, transactions, data size, availability, etc) are overestimated by the leadership by a couple of orders of magnitude and pushback tends to be career-limiting - When the leadership eventually realizes the failure of its vision, it "pivots", and keeps pivoting at the speed of a turbine, "reframing" the so-called vision. - The "costly, entitled" developers often come from some body shop which pays them $25/hour and charges $75 (illustrative values only) - Costly, unentitled, competent developers probably ran for the hills or were rejected because they weren't "with the program" - they said something realistic in the interview. - The process is not cheap or easy or risk free, yet many companies hire and pay as if it is. - The mere act of getting cohesive requirements out of people is one of the hardest parts of software, and one of the largest reasons for failure. - The rest isn't easy, either, unless it's a conceptual copy of some vanilla CRUD system that does nothing novel or "web scale" (whatever that is). OTOH, I read some devs stating that software development is just bolting legos together, what's the problem? If you are referring to these devs, I see your point, but they and their ilk are the creations of corporates and startups who pushed the view that devs are commodity items - resources - who aren't really skilled and can be churned out of bootcamps and will be good enough to meet the deadlines. Now I am not criticizing bootcamps or the people who make it through them. There are many smart people who have no formal CS background who could make good devs, given time and experience. There are even more people who should not be allowed near a computer, sadly, who IMO are more commonly encountered. I am criticizing the social forces that put money above useful education, profit above knowledge, ideology above science and engineering, the short term against the entire future.