Invisible wrote:
> Mind you, arguably the same principle applies any time anybody designs a
> new product. How long does it take to design and build a house? Well,
> you can take an educated guess, but...

A house is not a new product.

"Programming is not like building a house over and over again. If you build
your first house, you have no idea how long it will take to build a wall,
make the roof or creating one square meter of floor. Once you did all this,
you know how long it took and when you build your second house, you know
that it will take about as long as it did the first time, if not faster,
since you are getting better at a task the more often you are doing it.

 Every piece of code you write is a *new* piece of code, you are never
repeating the same task again. Why would you repeat the same task? If you
ever need the same code again, you copy&paste it; that will take you about
5 seconds. If you ever need the same application again, you just copy the
one you wrote last time.

 A software developer faces the problem that he needs to write new code
every day, as there is no point in writing *old* code again. So every time
the task is a new task for you. It's like you are building a house today, a
car tomorrow, and creating a lovely garden the day after tomorrow; and you
are always doing it for the first time. How can you estimate in advance how
long you will need for it?"

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