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The Software Industry Is Still the Problem

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Re: The Software Industry Is Still the Problem

#4
> It may be less obvious why the state cares who runs pet shops, inseminates cattle, or performs zoological taxidermy, but if you read the applicable laws, you'll learn that animal welfare and protection of endangered species have many and obscure corner cases.

But how did many those laws come to be?

Is it because the state cares about these professions a-priori, or because established players in those industries lobbied to restrict who can enter the profession in order to protect their market position and comparative advantage?

And yes, the latter can be true while also it leading to an outcome that produces higher quality than if thise laws were not there - but quality may not have been the reason the laws were proposed in the firt place.

Re: The Software Industry Is Still the Problem

#5
> "If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization."

Except that isn’t what software engineers largely do, we aren’t building the nth copy of the same building with a slightly different skin. Those kind of largely canned projects are straightforward and mostly offshored to low cost countries.

The other type of project is complex and unpredictable because no one knows the full scope of the project, the specifications and interactions. Most of the complexity and time in software engineering is getting that sorted, not the coding. Not to say coding something complex and non-trivial is easy, but the main challenges aren’t the code IMHO

Re: The Software Industry Is Still the Problem

#7
post #5

> "If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." Except that isn’t what software engineers largely do, we aren’t building the nth copy of the same building with a slightly different skin. Those kind of largely canned projects are straightforward and mostly offshored to low cost countries. The other type of project is complex and…

> Except that isn’t what software engineers largely do, we aren’t building the nth copy of the same building with a slightly different skin.

That’s exactly what most developers do.

There is far greater variation in boring bridges spanning small streams than most web applications and yet after more than 20 years we still can’t figure it out without some giant framework to do most of it for us.

Re: The Software Industry Is Still the Problem

#8
post #4

> It may be less obvious why the state cares who runs pet shops, inseminates cattle, or performs zoological taxidermy, but if you read the applicable laws, you'll learn that animal welfare and protection of endangered species have many and obscure corner cases. But how did many those laws come to be? Is it because the state cares about these professions a-priori, or because established players in those industries lob…

Are you saying we're safe from exploding toilets because of regulatory capture by a few corrupt individuals? Bring on the corruption!

Re: The Software Industry Is Still the Problem

#10
post #5

> "If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." Except that isn’t what software engineers largely do, we aren’t building the nth copy of the same building with a slightly different skin. Those kind of largely canned projects are straightforward and mostly offshored to low cost countries. The other type of project is complex and…

The main challenge of building a building that does not collapse isn't how to swing a hammer.
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