Re:Ask HN: Why do software companies still insist on Estimat...
by potamic on Friday October 21, 2022 @04:15AM
(#33285756)
I think you're not appreciating the complexity involved in these. Except for delivery, other tasks do involve significant discovery, research and problem solving. Delivery on the other hand is also hard to estimate. Especially when you have multiple deliveries lined up, need to plan your route, find parking, register with building security, manage obscure addresses etc.
Re:Ask HN: Why do software companies still insist on Estimat...
by soulofmischief on Friday October 21, 2022 @09:23AM
(#33287736)
I said:
> They also all suffer from estimation issues in practice. Luckily these constraints set a limit on how much a competent professional can underestimate the project.
Where exactly did I claim these weren't complex services? All I said was that there are more constraints on these services than pure software dev. I went further and broke software dev down into different buckets of complexity to further pare down the argument and concede that some software dev should be constrained enough for accurate estimates.
Dispensing with the straw man, what exactly is incorrect about my comment?
They also all suffer from estimation issues in practice. Luckily these constraints set a limit on how much a competent professional can underestimate the project.
If you're asking someone to install or update some software they've installed before on a similar system, they should be able to give you a solid estimate. This has parallels with many of the services you mentioned.
If you're asking them to research, develop and test entirely new components, which is the basis of software engineering (an engineer does more than install and update packages), you should be able to understand why this is different than delivering food.