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"Why do so many software projects fail when you don’t see any skyscrapers collapsing under their own weight?"

I think this is a great question to use as a thought exercise. We don't see the designs that fail, as they don't pass the review? Using the analogy of software engineering being the design stage (vs build/construction stage), this would be a closer comparison. How many skyscraper designs fail before they end up being "uptaken".

Also, just because buildings don't collapse and fail catastrophically, I assume there are many flaws in the design that get "worked around" during construction. Many flaws (bugs) do likely end up "in production", but they are more of a technical debt type of issue that will be a burden for building maintenance and/or future tenants.




watch engineering disasters or extreme engineering and you will find a discipline that has failed and learned from mistakes for hundreds of years.




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