Comment by qwertyuiop_
19 hours ago
Software cannot be built like skyscrapers because the sponsors know about the malleability of the medium and treat it like a lump of clay that by adding water can be shaped to something else.
19 hours ago
Software cannot be built like skyscrapers because the sponsors know about the malleability of the medium and treat it like a lump of clay that by adding water can be shaped to something else.
You're mixing up design and manufacturing. A skyscraper is first completely designed (on paper, cad systems, prototypes), before it is manufactured. In software engineering, coding is often more a design phase than a manufacturing phase.
Designers need malleability, that is why they all want digital design systems.
Yep! Manufacturing is the running of the software, either via testing or via deployment. That’s when you’ll find bugs or design defects. Operational errors (misconfigurations, under allocation of resources) are not related to the design of the software itself.
Splitting coding and design is a bad idea. It’s like asking engineers not to draw and measure.
Funny you bring up the clay analogy.
It was discussed here just 2 days ago intensively.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46881543
But software is in fact not very malleable at all. It's true the medium supports change, it's just a bunch of bits, but change is actually hard and expensive, perhaps more than other mediums.
I'd argue it's more malleable than a skyscraper.
How rapidly has business software changed since COVID? Yet how many skyscrapers remain partially unoccupied in big cities like London, because of the recent arrival of widespread hybrid working?
The buildings are structurally unchanged and haven't been demolished to make way for buildings that better support hybrid working. Sure office fit outs are more oriented towards smaller simultaneous attendance with more hot desking. Also a new industry boom around team building socials has arrived. Virtual skeet shooting or golf, for example.
On the whole, engineered cities are unchanged, their ancient and rigid specifications lacking the foresight to include the requirements that accommodate hybrid working. Software meanwhile has adapted and as the OP says, evolved.
With LLMs it's becoming very malleable.