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That makes me wonder what other disciplines there are that have the unpredictability and open-endedness of software. I read that on large construction projects,

by gruseom 15y ago

That makes me wonder what other disciplines there are that have the unpredictability and open-endedness of software. I read that on large construction projects, a 1% overrun is considered failure. That is clearly a different universe. Who else is in our universe?

6ren 15y ago
I think it includes anything involving new knowledge: e.g. law, science/mathematics, invention. Maybe also in the academic Arts (I don't know enough to be sure), and also in the creative arts - painting, sculpture, writing (there's exploration and massive overruns there). Also, exploration in prospecting, oil discovery - though that's not really open-ended. OK, I think it's being able to open up/zoom into finer detail (like knowledge, recursive structures, fractal) + discovery.
- gruseom 15y ago
  Law, I'm not so sure. Any variations posed by new legal cases are still limited by the basics of human nature. Oil discovery? Don't think so. People may look in different places but they don't invent new ways of doing each project. The other examples are all art. (The practice of science itself is an art and not a science.) Is software an art?
xiaoma 15y ago
Mathematicians are. They couldn't tell if Fermat's last theorem was solvable in a day, or a year... or not by the efforts of many of the world's greatest minds for centuries.
- gruseom 15y ago
  Agreed. Math is art with proofs. Or formalized imagination. Or something. It would be significant if that's the closest thing to what we do in software. (Obviously, math and computing are close as theoretical disciplines, if not overlapping totally, but that's not the same question.) Is there any kind of construction or engineering that comes closer? Because those are the analogues people have mostly (and largely unhelpfully) turned to when trying to understand how software projects work. People say "engineer" when they mean "programmer"; they never say "mathematician".

by gruseom 15y ago

6ren 15y ago

I think it includes anything involving new knowledge: e.g. law, science/mathematics, invention. Maybe also in the academic Arts (I don't know enough to be sure), and also in the creative arts - painting, sculpture, writing (there's exploration and massive overruns there). Also, exploration in prospecting, oil discovery - though that's not really open-ended. OK, I think it's being able to open up/zoom into finer detail (like knowledge, recursive structures, fractal) + discovery.

gruseom 15y ago
Law, I'm not so sure. Any variations posed by new legal cases are still limited by the basics of human nature. Oil discovery? Don't think so. People may look in different places but they don't invent new ways of doing each project. The other examples are all art. (The practice of science itself is an art and not a science.) Is software an art?

xiaoma 15y ago

Mathematicians are. They couldn't tell if Fermat's last theorem was solvable in a day, or a year... or not by the efforts of many of the world's greatest minds for centuries.

gruseom 15y ago
Agreed. Math is art with proofs. Or formalized imagination. Or something. It would be significant if that's the closest thing to what we do in software. (Obviously, math and computing are close as theoretical disciplines, if not overlapping totally, but that's not the same question.) Is there any kind of construction or engineering that comes closer? Because those are the analogues people have mostly (and largely unhelpfully) turned to when trying to understand how software projects work. People say "engineer" when they mean "programmer"; they never say "mathematician".