What makes the hiking analogy perfect is that people are so accepting of it as an analogy. My first thought: Why the fuck are you hiking to Los Angeles?

Plane, train, or for adventure, Greyhound. A sailboat makes more sense. A bicycle makes more sense. And if you insist on walking, at least follow a fucking road instead of cutting cross country.

If you decide the first step to driving to LA is mining iron ore to smelt for casting an engine block and building a Bessemer furnace for the steel for hand forged pistons, then there's lots of shit that can go wrong, EPA permits and zoning laws, even if you've done done it before.

The reason software production estimates are bad is because they aren't taken seriously. The guild of programmers can say, "we shall get from A to B by cross country hike."

Yes, the analogy is perfect because its absurdity is acceptable.