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> I did spend a lot more than 30 minutes with a project coordinator, and complex construction projects seem to align remarkably well with software projects. I

> I did spend a lot more than 30 minutes with a project coordinator, and complex construction projects seem to align remarkably well with software projects. I don't understand how you can say this with a straight face. Material costs for software projects are nonexistent (and don't come at me with AWS blabla, it's still way less than when building physical things). Hitting delete on what you've done so far costs nothing. Construction is pretty straightforward in that even if there might be different approaches to building a certain object (like a wall), these different approaches are agreed upon (as in people agree each is a valid approach and will choose which based on the pros/cons of each). Unlike in software where there exists no agreement in how to approach a problem and each programmer out there will probably provide a different solution.

heavenlyblue 8y ago
I think you're quite a bit delusional here. Construction industry and the software industry are asymmetrically different from each other in the complexities you'd need to deal with. For example, there might be many ways to do the same thing in the software industry, but you might have already dedicated yourself to proving that a given solution works "good enough". So hitting "delete" on that solution would require unmaintainable at that step amount of coordination between many teams who are using your code. Construction doesn't deal with constant changes to the laws of physics, but software industry has a churn rate of APIs of about 1 new version every 6 months, all of which need to be constantly overseen and accounted for. Did construction industry have anything like GDPR happen to it in the last 20 years?
- tomnipotent 8y ago
  > Did construction industry have anything like GDPR happen to it in the last 20 years? You mean like regulations and building codes so that we don't have incidents where apartment buildings collapse like in China? Some tests to get certain architecture certification require them to literally memorize different rules from everything to how close an AC unit can be to certain things. There are a LOT of rules to follow.
groestl 8y ago
I believe we might be thinking about different project sizes here. I'm not speaking about building a single-family home. The complexities of construction projects arise at a much larger project volume compared to software projects. The equivalence to a single-family home (which agreeably bears considerable material costs, and already requires a couple of people to build) might be a simple RoR application. Very straightforward, and to some extend every professional agrees on how to execute on that. But if you accept a certain multiplicator in project costs (say, two orders of magnitude) before you compare a construction project to a software project, you will notice a lot of challenges commonly attributed to software projects.

heavenlyblue 8y ago

I think you're quite a bit delusional here. Construction industry and the software industry are asymmetrically different from each other in the complexities you'd need to deal with. For example, there might be many ways to do the same thing in the software industry, but you might have already dedicated yourself to proving that a given solution works "good enough". So hitting "delete" on that solution would require unmaintainable at that step amount of coordination between many teams who are using your code. Construction doesn't deal with constant changes to the laws of physics, but software industry has a churn rate of APIs of about 1 new version every 6 months, all of which need to be constantly overseen and accounted for. Did construction industry have anything like GDPR happen to it in the last 20 years?

tomnipotent 8y ago
> Did construction industry have anything like GDPR happen to it in the last 20 years? You mean like regulations and building codes so that we don't have incidents where apartment buildings collapse like in China? Some tests to get certain architecture certification require them to literally memorize different rules from everything to how close an AC unit can be to certain things. There are a LOT of rules to follow.

groestl 8y ago

I believe we might be thinking about different project sizes here. I'm not speaking about building a single-family home. The complexities of construction projects arise at a much larger project volume compared to software projects. The equivalence to a single-family home (which agreeably bears considerable material costs, and already requires a couple of people to build) might be a simple RoR application. Very straightforward, and to some extend every professional agrees on how to execute on that. But if you accept a certain multiplicator in project costs (say, two orders of magnitude) before you compare a construction project to a software project, you will notice a lot of challenges commonly attributed to software projects.