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As the article states, "However, metaphors can be misleading, and I do not claim that we should write specifications just because architects draw blueprints."
by paulmooreparks 6y ago
As the article states, "However, metaphors can be misleading, and I do not claim that we should write specifications just because architects draw blueprints."
He's not arguing for specifications because architects draw them for builders. Rather, architects draw them for some of the same reasons that the author posits that software specifications should be written.
As it says elsewhere... "[A]s the cartoonist Guindon wrote: 'Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.' We think in order to understand what we are doing. If we understand something, we can explain it clearly in writing. If we have not explained it in writing, then we do not know if we really understand it." That's why one should write specifications.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoA written software specification can still be spectacularly wrong. Writing down a spec is no guarantee that you have avoided fuzzy and incomplete thinking or that you understand the problem you are trying to solve.
- paulmooreparks 6y agoAlso covered in the article.
- doctor_eval 6y agoLike I say, I don’t disagree with anything in the article. In fact I’d go further and say that the metaphor is not just misleading, but actually damaging.