> the only way to really discover the requirements is to build the thing. I totally get what you're saying here and in an ideal world, this would be it. Unfor

> the only way to really discover the requirements is to build the thing. I totally get what you're saying here and in an ideal world, this would be it. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world, projects have budgets and need to be delivered within a given interval. They touch other aspects of the business and are interlinked with marketing, support, legal, financing and so on. I think it's our job as software engineers to figure out the requirements. One issue we have in our industry is that we do a sub par job of educating people regarding how software works and giving them alternatives instead of binary yes/no answers. I would say most developers (and I'm generalizing here) lack the communication/social skills to do so. The key here is to strike a balance between features, budgets and deliverables.