Why making software is so difficult
Ryan Dawson · ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes · 2014
This paper develops a metaphor that expresses what is so difficult about software production. The purpose of the metaphor is to be applicable to real-world software production situations, especially on larger or more complex projects, where decisions are made in ways that neglect some of the aspects of software production that make it so difficult, especially that seeing how to solve a problem can be immensely difficult to do from the beginning and as a result one sometimes has to abandon a whole approach and start again. The use of the metaphor is justified with reference to related literature and by application to certain characteristic situations.