
The myth of software development time estimation - samk117
https://medium.com/@DuroSoft/the-myth-of-software-time-estimations-576a7466d91a
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bediger4000
I heartily agree. You might also want to read:

[http://scribblethink.org/Work/kcsest.pdf](http://scribblethink.org/Work/kcsest.pdf)

[http://scribblethink.org/Work/Softestim/softestim.html](http://scribblethink.org/Work/Softestim/softestim.html)

I don't know why this isn't a standard belief.

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samk117
thanks for the links!

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samk117
update: Because of the popularity of this article here and on Slashdot, and
the controversial views I express in it, I have been terminated from my
contracting position at my current employer, which was my main source of
income. You can read more information and (if you like) donate to help my
cause here: [https://www.gofundme.com/lost-job-bc-of-engineering-
article](https://www.gofundme.com/lost-job-bc-of-engineering-article)

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samk117
^ author here if anyone has any questions or comments!

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tehrealjames
Going to have to say it... I really cannot stand this pseudo intellectual
writing style. The article is written like you just discovered a Thesaurus.
Good writing is clear, concise, and simple. This section:

>Even if we completely ignore the “human” element at play in the development
cycle, the notion that we could come up with accurate software development
time estimations is the quintessential unrealistic expectation — a fool’s
errand. Its intractability comes not from incompetency or from a lack of
discipline, but from a deep-seated, fundamental limitation imposed on our
reality and codified in the proof of the Church-Turing thesis

Is just painful..

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samk117
I could have just written: "Even if we ignore the unpredictability of humans,
there are deep, logical, Halting Problem-related reasons why coming up with
accurate software development time estimations is idiotic." But then this
wouldn't feel like a grand project that points out something fundamental
perhaps a lot of people have missed, and doesn't convey the degree to which I
think the halting problem actively limits what we humans can and can't do. I
didn't word it a particular way to sound intellectual, I chose each word to
convey the pseudo-religious experience of realizing that those hidden gotchas
you experience while you code on a daily basis are there because of something
fundamental, on the order of a physical law of the cosmos, so quit trying to
reason around that fact with time-based estimations that pretend that
everything is always going to go even close to what was planned. If you can
find a non-douchy-intellectual way of giving me a pseudo-religious experience,
then by all means, show me. It should sound like morgan freedman is reading it
from the script of Cosmos.

edit: starting to like my edit better :/

