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> I bet if we fast forward 1000 years, you'd find that software engineering will have become as rigorous as what we have today in civil engineering.

This isn't evident at all. In software, every situation is novel, so there is no room for repeatable processes.

You can build a "bridge library" once and tweak it for each situation, but you never need to develop a rigorous process to build that library again.



> every situation is novel

this is the point i m contesting - that most situations aren't as novel as the stakeholders think it is. The failure happens because the assumption that it's novel is there!


In general there may not be that much novelty per project, but that isn't the novelty that one needs to worry about in software projects. The relevant novelty is the novelty to the project team. Also lot of the novelty comes not from the technical side, but domain and organization that will be using the software.


This is a big argument in favor of experienced devs, who have deep technical and domain expertise.




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