Software is Hard
date: 2008-05-16 07:19:28 +08:00 category: programming
I’ve been revisiting some code I wrote a couple of months ago in order to implement some new ideas. It is amazing how much information you need to keep in your head to even start working on a modification of existing code. It took me a while to get used to the code again, thankfully I had written some simple comments.
At the point of writing the program, writing comments seems like a waste of time because all the information is already at your fingertips, but if you try to work on the program again after a while, you will find the comments invaluable.
But the truth is that there is no crisis, and there never has been. The only problem, and the reason software projects keep failing, is that of unrealistic expectations.
Software is hard. Really hard. This should not be surprising to anyone who understands that it is really the field of assembling instructions for doing… anything. Anything that people want to get done. It’s sort of a meta-field that encompasses almost all other fields, with more being added every day.