Software That Works is Precious

It’s harder to create than every expects, even when they know it

Ben "The Hosk" Hosking
4 min readJul 15, 2023
Photo by Marin Tulard on Unsplash

Software that works is precious. User doesn’t idly discard it -Tracy Kidder The Soul of a new machine

Software that is in production and used is precious because much software doesn’t make it into production.

Creating software is too hard for many projects to deliver. It's more complex, harder, takes longer and costs more than estimated.

Software Is Always Harder Than Expected

Creating plans is easy, creating software is hard

“The first step of any project is to grossly underestimate its complexity and difficulty” Nicoll Hunt

People are fooled by the simplicity of high-level requirements, they forget how detailed custom-built software is.

People create the plans and estimates they want to be true. They create the plan and cost that would make them a hero, get them a promotion and benefits everyone.

It's not just the complexity that gets underestimated, but the difficulty of execution. When planning, we forget there…

--

--

Ben "The Hosk" Hosking

Technology philosopher | Software dev → Solution architect | Avid reader | Life long learner