> Software estimates are notoriously hard to get right and it's not uncommon for them to be wrong by several orders of magnitude OK now hold on there just a se

> Software estimates are notoriously hard to get right and it's not uncommon for them to be wrong by several orders of magnitude OK now hold on there just a sec... I've seen estimates off by 20%, 50%, even 100%. I'm sure there are estimates that have been off by 500% (I'd hate to dig into why). But "several orders of magnitude" is something like 10,000x -100,000x. Hopefully that is just extreme hyperbole, but honestly in the context of discussing estimates, it seems particularly out of place.