Explaining to business people why building software is still hard
4 hours ago
- A hackathon project made rapid progress on day one but completely broke on the second day due to endless bugs, demonstrating how quickly software can degrade.
- Non-technical people often underestimate software complexity, thinking code is just fixed-meaning words and failing to understand the need for refactoring and infrastructure work.
- Building software is like renovating an old house: patching issues temporarily (bucket) is not the same as fixing the root cause, and adding infrastructure later is far more expensive than building it in from the start.
- Unlike a house, software is never truly finished; it requires constant updates and maintenance while still in use by customers.
- The key to recovery during the hackathon was slowing down, understanding the problem area by area, and methodically building a demo-able flow instead of rushing.