I once heard someone say that Software Engineering as a field today is about where Chemistry was 300 years ago: it's just alchemy. Nobody actually knows how it

I once heard someone say that Software Engineering as a field today is about where Chemistry was 300 years ago: it's just alchemy. Nobody actually knows how it works or what is or isn't best. Some people have tried some stuff out and formed different theories around their anecdotal experiences. Some of those theories sometimes translate to other cases; some of them are completely bonkers. There's no real way to tell one from the other, because there's no concrete shared reality. So instead people argue a lot and the best rhetorician usually wins.