I think the author has a few too many misconceptions about the programmers' misconceptions.
"How long will it take to implement search here?" "Wait, why does it take longer than a week, Google can do it".
Things I've heard an actual Product Owner once say. Please tell the the one automobile engineer who was asked to make a car in a week.
So yes, I absolutely believe that /some/ programmers will say that their work is so complicated and like engineering, there are just a lot of seemingly exaggerated examples that have actually happened. I'm not saying it's harder. I'm just saying there are classes of problems that should not happen in civil engineering.
Project is halfway done, written in Python. Someone: "Can we not switch to Java?". I would equate that to "The metal bridge is halfway done, can we switch to wood?". This is not inferring that this is the most concerning problem in a problem, and that's my gripe with this article. And the moving bridge is also an exaggerated example taken for shock value. How often does that really happen? And would you put a random engineer of medium seniority in charge of this?
Disclaimer: I am not saying programming is harder or special. I've worked on construction sites and I've seen my fair share of ridiculous requests. But people are often simply persuaded a lot easier if you point to a physical wall and explain the problem, versus software where you need to start explaining at the very beginning. Sadly, often also for customers or product managers.
"How long will it take to implement search here?" "Wait, why does it take longer than a week, Google can do it".
Things I've heard an actual Product Owner once say. Please tell the the one automobile engineer who was asked to make a car in a week.
So yes, I absolutely believe that /some/ programmers will say that their work is so complicated and like engineering, there are just a lot of seemingly exaggerated examples that have actually happened. I'm not saying it's harder. I'm just saying there are classes of problems that should not happen in civil engineering.
Project is halfway done, written in Python. Someone: "Can we not switch to Java?". I would equate that to "The metal bridge is halfway done, can we switch to wood?". This is not inferring that this is the most concerning problem in a problem, and that's my gripe with this article. And the moving bridge is also an exaggerated example taken for shock value. How often does that really happen? And would you put a random engineer of medium seniority in charge of this?
Disclaimer: I am not saying programming is harder or special. I've worked on construction sites and I've seen my fair share of ridiculous requests. But people are often simply persuaded a lot easier if you point to a physical wall and explain the problem, versus software where you need to start explaining at the very beginning. Sadly, often also for customers or product managers.