[lug] Developer abuse

[P. Scott DeVos]

Bill Thoen wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, Dean Brissinger wrote:
> 
> 

> 
> How come software projects seem to be so hard to estimate correctly? Civil
> engineers have standard practices and procedures and when they build a
> 20-story building, they generally know how much it's going to cost and
> when it will be done -- in advance of the first brick being laid upon 
> another -- and also they are relatively sure that if some 14-year
> old kid sneaks in the back door some day that he isn't going to be able to
> drop the building like a house of cards by pushing the elevator buttons in
> an unexpected order.
> 

Buildings are all pretty similar.  Contractors do the same thing over 
and over again and it all costs pretty much the same per square foot for 
a give type of construction and style.

If software engineers were allowed to keep building the same type of 
applicaton over and over, they would get good at estimating too, but the 
nature of software is such that you only do it once and it gets 
duplicated over and over for essentially nothing so every project is 
completely unlike anything you have ever done before.

Another thing, if the requirements for a building changed as frequently 
as the requirements for software change, contractors would never manage 
to finish on time or on budget either.