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"A complex system designed from scratch never works". And yet we flew to the moon. And have airplanes, and and and. A lot of agile is just an excuse for softw

"A complex system designed from scratch never works". And yet we flew to the moon. And have airplanes, and and and. A lot of agile is just an excuse for software "engineering" being in the throw shit at the wall and see what sticks stage of evolution. Construction went through the same, software has freemasons now. But no engineering whatsoever. Example: People still write their own date conversions (and fuck it up).

lmm 8y ago
> And yet we flew to the moon. And have airplanes, and and and. We do, but not by designing from scratch. We achieved those things by incrementally extending existing designs and verifying that the newer, more complex designs had the desired properties. > A lot of agile is just an excuse for software "engineering" being in the throw shit at the wall and see what sticks stage of evolution. Construction went through the same, software has freemasons now. But no engineering whatsoever. The constraints that apply to software are very different from those that apply to construction. What if "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" really is a better way of making software than "engineering"? > Example: People still write their own date conversions (and fuck it up). Indeed they do. Do you find this is more common in projects that specify and design up front or in projects that don't?
- igouy 8y ago
  > What if "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" really is a better way of making software than "engineering"? What if it isn't.
  - lmm 8y ago
    If it isn't, then maybe agile is a bad idea and we should expect to see agile projects fail more often/expensively than non-agile projects. But that's not what we see (at least not what I've seen).
- andy_ppp 8y ago
  The people making the planes made meticulous changes to the design before anything was built so I really don't think your point is supported by aeroplane manufacturers. The builders weren't just told make it faster and more fuel efficient and to get on with building it.
deleted 8y ago
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Jtsummers 8y ago
Those weren't designed "from scratch", start-to-finish, with no testing or prototyping along the way. The Wright Brothers developed a wind tunnel and many models on their way to first flight. Same concept for getting to the moon. Those large scale projects were not done in a Waterfall fashion, they were done iteratively with models/simulations/prototypes produced along the way.
- igouy 8y ago
  > done iteratively with models/simulations/prototypes models/simulations/prototypes != iteratively
  - Jtsummers 8y ago
    They’re key components of the iterative process.
    - igouy 8y ago
      They're key components of BDUF — "Figure 7. Step 3: Attempt to do the job twice - the first result provides an early simulation of the final product." http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970.pdf http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970...

lmm 8y ago

> And yet we flew to the moon. And have airplanes, and and and. We do, but not by designing from scratch. We achieved those things by incrementally extending existing designs and verifying that the newer, more complex designs had the desired properties. > A lot of agile is just an excuse for software "engineering" being in the throw shit at the wall and see what sticks stage of evolution. Construction went through the same, software has freemasons now. But no engineering whatsoever. The constraints that apply to software are very different from those that apply to construction. What if "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" really is a better way of making software than "engineering"? > Example: People still write their own date conversions (and fuck it up). Indeed they do. Do you find this is more common in projects that specify and design up front or in projects that don't?

igouy 8y ago
> What if "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" really is a better way of making software than "engineering"? What if it isn't.
- lmm 8y ago
  If it isn't, then maybe agile is a bad idea and we should expect to see agile projects fail more often/expensively than non-agile projects. But that's not what we see (at least not what I've seen).
andy_ppp 8y ago
The people making the planes made meticulous changes to the design before anything was built so I really don't think your point is supported by aeroplane manufacturers. The builders weren't just told make it faster and more fuel efficient and to get on with building it.

deleted 8y ago

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Jtsummers 8y ago

Those weren't designed "from scratch", start-to-finish, with no testing or prototyping along the way. The Wright Brothers developed a wind tunnel and many models on their way to first flight. Same concept for getting to the moon. Those large scale projects were not done in a Waterfall fashion, they were done iteratively with models/simulations/prototypes produced along the way.

igouy 8y ago
> done iteratively with models/simulations/prototypes models/simulations/prototypes != iteratively
- Jtsummers 8y ago
  They’re key components of the iterative process.
  - igouy 8y ago
    They're key components of BDUF — "Figure 7. Step 3: Attempt to do the job twice - the first result provides an early simulation of the final product." http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970.pdf http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970...