Comment by rtpg
8 years ago
Super interesting!
I feel like most programmers have it easy. For the most part the first step of a program is "take the universe and project it to some fixed structure". The entire universe of complexity gone.
The box has to be the right shape, but even if it's not things can mostly work.
You forget to account for wind and suddenly your New York skyscraper is falling over. Forget a field in your database and you just have a slightly busted thing.
In light of some memorable software design failures (which includes not just code but UX design, usage scenarios, compliance etc) I would kindly disagree. And the people of Hawaii would too I am sure.
It really depends what the software is used for. Software is just peoples thoughts and intentions codified for quick access/evaluation.
If they are used for a game it might not be important, if they are used for something important it also becomes important and exactly because the complexity of real life is difficult to account for ahead of time.
Sorry, I didn't mean to minimize the consequences.
There are massive failures, and now, more than ever, software interacts with other software in unpredictable ways.
I was just expressing the feeling that things are even worse in other domains. Though sometimes automating a huge unstructured mess is difficult, imagine having a huge unstructured mess and dealing with it by hand!
Programmers might have many problems, but at least a subset of the work happens in a purely mathematical space.