Hacker News Reader

I’m surprised by the cynicism here. Working in software we know that high complexity projects are _really_ hard to estimate.

Hofstadter's Law says it always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Too many unknown unknowns. If the projects were broken down into smaller chunks, the incremental costs would be better understood as the project progressed.

View on HN

Construction generally is not doing a brand new greenfield project. Experienced web developers can put together another website for pretty close to budget. As soon as you deviate from the framework and tools that the experienced web developer knows well though estimates go out the window.

Big construction projects have a lot of well understood parts. Sometimes you get unexpected rocks or something, but for the most some countries have done much better than others at controlling costs in projects of similar complexity which suggests that the difference isn't because it is hard to estimate.

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/07/22/new-report-on-... ctrl-f design-build.

basically, if you order a feasibility study, a design and then separately an implementation, you can keep costs under control. if you do it all together, you gonna have overrun time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com