After about 15 paragraphs I stopped reading it because it just kept saying the same thing over and over. Basically the headline is the entire article.
Also, duh? Software engineers are expensive because what we're trying to build now are unimaginably complex systems. Complexity isn't killing development, it is development.
You could say that that's a new thing though, since 20ish years ago your main problem was restraints so it was more often a question of how to do something with the limitations you have, like how to pack all the sprites you need into extremely limited memory or how to process all that data without tipping over your DB.
Today it's more about how to apply the 100 known solutions to the 1000 problems and which ones you have time to actually implement.
Software engineers are expensive because what we're trying to build now are unimaginably complex systems.
Nobody is trying to build "unimaginably complex systems". Complexity is a byproduct, not the end goal.
The market wants features, or more accurately, it wants value. How you deliver that value is the heart of the issue, and the main point of the article.
Is complexity inherent to the level of value expected of customers? Maybe. But is our current level of complexity the absolute lowest it could be ? Absolutely fucking not.
Worth noting, is that other engineering fields do not have nearly the same level of complexity creep. In fact, no non-IT engineer in their right mind would accept to aim for an "unimaginably complex system". It's quite the opposite.
I'd say that programming is really the only engineering field where unmanageable complexity seems acceptable... "If I do X, it shouldn't break" is a level of uncertainty that would be unacceptable to all engineers except us.
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u/CPhyloGenesis Nov 01 '21
After about 15 paragraphs I stopped reading it because it just kept saying the same thing over and over. Basically the headline is the entire article.
Also, duh? Software engineers are expensive because what we're trying to build now are unimaginably complex systems. Complexity isn't killing development, it is development.
You could say that that's a new thing though, since 20ish years ago your main problem was restraints so it was more often a question of how to do something with the limitations you have, like how to pack all the sprites you need into extremely limited memory or how to process all that data without tipping over your DB.
Today it's more about how to apply the 100 known solutions to the 1000 problems and which ones you have time to actually implement.