Again … ?

It is again time for posting? … Time flies.

During the last days I kept wondering about software engineering. Somehow it is quite unsatisfying. Programming is a hard, tiresome and longsome work. I takes foreever. A program with the complexity of “Hello World” requires, if we are honest, roughly one week, I believe. No kidding. Of course, you could code this in 10 minutes, but if the programm needs to do something as absurd as processing input to generate output, then there will be countless details. Every one claiming “Whatever, I am gonna make it in an instance” makes himself/herself unbelievable and disqualifies himself/herself for working on larger projects. Sadly, this is still true for myself as well. I still tend to dramatically underestimate the time software needs.

The worst thing, however, is that you will not see the software consuming time. You will put weeks and months into a software. And looking at it from the outside you will not see any progress. Of course, at one point-in-time there will be a “click” and almost everything starts working, but it is a long way there.

So, how about RAD? My experience with RAD is that it is ok for small GUI-Programs. However, if the planned functionality is to large or to complex you quickly reach a point in RAD where it gets harder and harder to introduce the missing functions. You complete like 80% and then you have to fight for every new function to work correctly with the rest. The only way to avoid this is to produce a good foundation for your software. And there we are again: writing software which consumes a lot of time without providing early visible successes.

Well, whatever. This is the way it is, it seems.

Did I complain about software development, again?