Software is a vast field and we do different kinds of work. Some work is easier to estimate than others. Estimating TTC for "make a reputation system for a so

Software is a vast field and we do different kinds of work. Some work is easier to estimate than others. Estimating TTC for "make a reputation system for a social network" is probably going to be harder than the same for a typical Oracle app. Mostly because the former involves some science and engineering and not just programming. But that's the point I'm trying to make: SWEs are asked all the time to solve hard problems, not just code from a detailed spec. At various times I've been asked to design a CPU, write a C compiler, invent technology to extract simple factoids from text, and make a spellcorrector for web search. Incidentally, the approach to schedules was sometimes reasonable and sometimes unreasonable. Smaller companies tended to be less reasonable. Such tasks are very different from UI heavy work or a typical database application, and are more difficult to estimate. Those persons writing compilers or improving web search indexing are not the same people talking about user stories. If you believe developers need to be professional and schedule their work, you're in the majority but you may not be doing truly interesting work. [Edited to say "Software" at the beginning instead of "Software Engineering".]