It's like that in other fields of engineering too, when they are making something they haven't built before. That's the essential part: for example, a lot of construction is really just rebuilding the same thing that's already been built 100,000 times in the past 100 years.
When they attempt to build something new, it often ends up like software – tremendous overruns in both cost and schedule.
The reason why this feels more commonplace in software is that we're usually designing something new. Software has essentially no reproduction costs, so there's no reason for anybody to design software that's a carbon copy of something you can already download or buy off-the-shelf. That's not the case in engineering of physical products or works. New buildings are needed all the time, even if they're performing exactly the same function as the building in the adjacent lot.
> It's like that in other fields of engineering too, when they are making something they haven't built before.
Exactly this. I like to use an analogy of building bridges :)
- OK, we have this valley and we want to drive cars over it. What do we
do?
- Hmm, we could just make the road along the bottom of the valley
- Wouldn't that cause the cars to fall because of the steep angle?
- Good point. Maybe if we built the road with a lot of twist and turns
- Then it's a slow and long drive.
- Maybe we could build some sort of catapult setup to throw the cars
across the valley
- That would make safety a concern though. Is there a way we could use
helicopter rotors to suspend a road in mid air over the valley?
- Or what if we attach the road to each side of the valley and make a
road that's strong enough to not crack in the middle under its own weight?
- Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. How do we make sure it can hold its
own weight, though?
- .....etc
> Maybe we could build some sort of catapult setup to throw the cars across the valley
This was played for laughs by German satire news website "Der Postillon" (like The Onion, but in German): "Department of Traffic to replace ramshackle bridges by jumping hills"
I immediately thought about SV, and then as I read
> - Maybe we could build some sort of catapult setup to throw the cars
> * across the valley*
I imagined some kind of scenario happening in an alternate reality where a startup was trying to dream up a viable way to actually achieve this in SV.
It was funny because of the fact that a lot of the ideas people do come up with are probably ideologically very similar in magnitude and ridiculous impossibility.
When they attempt to build something new, it often ends up like software – tremendous overruns in both cost and schedule.
C.f. the only new nuclear power plant being built in the West, which is $4 billion over budget and ten years late: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...
The reason why this feels more commonplace in software is that we're usually designing something new. Software has essentially no reproduction costs, so there's no reason for anybody to design software that's a carbon copy of something you can already download or buy off-the-shelf. That's not the case in engineering of physical products or works. New buildings are needed all the time, even if they're performing exactly the same function as the building in the adjacent lot.