> Virtually all software developers are building minor variations on thing that have been built hundreds if time before. I've never written a piece of software

> Virtually all software developers are building minor variations on thing that have been built hundreds if time before. I've never written a piece of software that has already existed that could do the job -- why would I -- that's why we have a thriving software market of purchasable software. The market of reusable software is massive. > This idea that software developers are somehow cranking about beautiful snowflakes of such uniqueness that it is impossible to ever estimate how long something will take is nonsense. Your argument is that you can estimate minor variations. But how do you know the consequence of adding feature X is a one hour job or a one day job? If you have 50 minor variations or 500 minor variations that are each maybe one hour or one day jobs, how long is that project going to take? I've got a unique snowflake here. In most other industries, they can estimate quite accurately because they've spent the time planning all the details. The cost of construction and labor absolutely dwarfs the cost of planning. With software, the planning is the entire project. The closer the plan is to covering every single possible case, the closer the software is to being done.