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9devyesterday at 9:23 PM2 repliesview on HN

> As you say, worthwhile software is usually novel.

This is an interesting assumption. I’d argue that the overwhelming majority of software is the most boring LoB CRUD apps you can imagine, and not novel at all. Yet, people need to estimate the tasks on these projects as well.


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wpietriyesterday at 10:57 PM

And starting in the late 1970s, there were tools available to simplify building LoB CRUD apps. [1] That has continued with things like Rails and Salesforce and no-code tooling.

If something is truly boring in software, it gets turned into a library or a tool for non-programmers to use. Our value is always driven by the novelty of the need.

And no, people don't need to estimate the tasks. My dad did LoB apps in the 1970s to the 1990s. E.g., order entry and shop floor management systems for office furniture factories. His approach was to get something basic working, see how it worked for the users, and then iteratively improve things until they'd created enough business advantage and/or cost savings to move on. Exploratory, iterative work like that can at best be done with broad ballpark estimates.

I grant that people want estimates. But that is usually about managerial fear of waste and/or need for control. But I think there are better ways to solve those problems.

[1] e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBase

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codr7today at 1:36 AM

But it's doing something novel, something the same people haven't done before, otherwise there would be no point in writing it.

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