I’m Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code
from:http://danshipper.com/non-technical-people-cant-estimate-developmen
“So the site’s pretty simple, all it needs to do is X, Y and Z. You seem like a good programmer so I’m sure it will only take you a few days to put it together.”
I get emails like this from time to time. The people that write them are almost invariably not technical and working on their first product. At first I got pretty annoyed when people talked like this. Who are they to go around estimating development times? But then I realized, even I am terrible at estimating how longmy own projects are going to take. How can I get mad at them if I can’t do it either?
The real reason I’m annoyed is not that their estimate is wrong. It’s that they assume that they can even make an estimate. That’s because as developers we unconsciously realize that the way a layperson naturally estimates complexity breaks down when it comes to software.
That’s not an excuse for being annoyed. But it brings up another more interesting question: why does the way we naturally measure complexity stop working when we apply it to programming?
To answer this question let’s think about how our brains estimate things. There are some things that are easy for someone with no experience to estimate and some things that aren’t.
Think about watching someone play guitar. Even if you’ve never played guitar you can probably infer from watching a performance of Mary Had a Little Lamb that it’s simple and that the person playing it does not need a great deal of skill to do so. It’s also pretty easy to watch someone play Pachabel’s Canon in D and infer that it is complex and would take a long time to learn how to play.
Why are we good at instantly estimating the complexity of these two songs? It’s because of the way we judge whether something is difficult or easy. Our brains have a few built in tools to do that and the first one is speed. In this case, it’s notes played per second. Notes played per second gives us a really easy, natural heuristic to estimate song difficulty. And because playing a song on the guitar is a physical, sensory activity it’s simple for our brains to measure speed and convert it into complexity.
We also have another natural heuristic: size. Think about a tent versus a mansion. Even someone who has never been to architecture school can tell you that in general it’s a lot easier to design and construct a tent than it is to design and construct a mansion. Why? Because we naturally use physical size as an analog for complexity.
Obviously neither of these are reliable 100% all of the time, but in most cases in life it gets the job done. That’s because in most cases we’re estimating something physical that our brains can relate to efficiently and without prior experience.
Now let’s talk about software. When a non-technical person attempts to estimate software development time they come armed with their two basic heuristics: complexity based on size and complexity based on speed. But what they don’t realize is that software is different. Software is by nature not physical. It exists in the ether. A tiny portion of it shows up on our computer screens from time to time. Because of this when it comes to building web apps (or any type of software for that matter) our basic heuristics break down.
The first one, speed, is essentially impossible to estimate for the layperson offhand. So the natural heuristic they tend to use is size. Some go with number of pages, some go with number of actions or number of features.
Sometimes this actually works! If you’re talking about a static site with a bland design it can be very easy to estimate development time for the layperson. But in general size does not translate reliably into complexity when it comes to software.
Unfortunately, the only heuristic that works when it comes to software complexity isexperience. And even that doesn’t work all the time. As a programmer I know I can use my prior experience building similar things to estimate how long each feature will take to implement. Then I add all that up and come up with a rough estimate of when I’ll be done with the project. But the fact of the matter is that in every project there are two or three bottlenecks that crop up during development. These bottlenecks suck up an inordinate amount of programmer time that can’t be reliably predicted beforehand. And so it throws your entire project off schedule by weeks or months.
That’s what someone without experience misses when they try to estimate complexity. They don’t realize that what works in almost any other situation, doesn’t work at all when it comes to software. And so next time you hear “I’m sure this will only take you a few days to code” try not to be annoyed with whoever said it. Just take a deep breath, link them to this post and go on with your day.
If you liked this post you should probably follow me on Twitter. Or check out my startup Airtime for Email. We help you market your products with your email signature.
I’m Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code的更多相关文章
- .net点选验证码实现思路分享
哈哈好久没冒泡了,最进看见点选验证码有点意思,所以想自己写一个. 先上效果图 如果你被这个效果吸引了就请继续看下去. 贴代码前先说点思路: 1.要有一个汉字库,并按字形分类.(我在数据库里是安部首分类 ...
- C# 在腾讯的发展
本文首发我的微信公众号"dotnet跨平台", 内容得到大家热烈的欢迎,全文重新发布在博客,欢迎转载,请注明出处. .NET 主要的开发语言是 C# , .NET 平台泛指遵循EC ...
- 你必须知道的EF知识和经验
注意:以下内容如果没有特别申明,默认使用的EF6.0版本,code first模式. 推荐MiniProfiler插件 工欲善其事,必先利其器. 我们使用EF和在很大程度提高了开发速度,不过随之带来的 ...
- 关于CryptoJS中md5加密以及aes加密的随笔
最近项目中用到了各种加密,其中就包括从没有接触过得aes加密,因此从网上各种查,官方的一种说法: 高级加密标准(英语:Advanced Encryption Standard,缩写:AES),在密码学 ...
- 试试SQLSERVER2014的内存优化表
试试SQLSERVER2014的内存优化表 SQL Server 2014中的内存引擎(代号为Hekaton)将OLTP提升到了新的高度. 现在,存储引擎已整合进当前的数据库管理系统,而使用先进内存技 ...
- CoreCLR源码探索(一) Object是什么
.Net程序员们每天都在和Object在打交道 如果你问一个.Net程序员什么是Object,他可能会信誓旦旦的告诉你"Object还不简单吗,就是所有类型的基类" 这个答案是对的 ...
- 【.net 深呼吸】细说CodeDom(3):命名空间
在上一篇文章中,老周介绍了表达式和语句,尽管老周没有把所有的内容都讲一遍,但相信大伙至少已经掌握基本用法.在本文中,咱们继续探讨 CodeDom 方面的奥秘,这一次咱们聊聊命名空间. 在开始之前,老周 ...
- 【.net 深呼吸】细说CodeDom(1):结构大观
CodeDom 是啥东东?Html Dom听过吧,XML Dom听过吧.DOM一般可翻译为 文档对象模型,那 Code + DOM呢,自然是指代码文档模型了.如果你从来没接触过 CodeDom,你大概 ...
- Asp.Net Mvc 使用WebUploader 多图片上传
来博客园有一个月了,哈哈.在这里学到了很多东西.今天也来试着分享一下学到的东西.希望能和大家做朋友共同进步. 最近由于项目需要上传多张图片,对于我这只菜鸟来说,以前上传图片都是直接拖得控件啊,而且还是 ...
- 十分钟介绍mobx与react
原文地址:https://mobxjs.github.io/mobx/getting-started.html 写在前面:本人英语水平有限,主要是写给自己看的,若有哪位同学看到了有问题的地方,请为我指 ...
随机推荐
- [译]:Orchard入门——部件管理
原文链接:Managing Widgets 在Orchard中,部件是可以加入到当前当前主题任何位置或区域(如侧栏sidebar或底部区域footer)的UI块(如:HTML)或代码部分(如:内容部分 ...
- mysql常见错误及解决方案
mysql error 2005 - Unknown MySQL server host 'localhost'(0) 此错误一般为地址信息错误,注意是否有空格. 在连接本地数据库时,最好使用127. ...
- hdu分类 Dynamic Programming(这是一场漫长的旅途)
下面是difficulty 1的题 1003 Max Sum 最长递增子序列.非常经典,最棒的解法是在线算法O(n)的复杂度. 贴的呢,是用dp做的代码. 先是一个高亮的dp递推式,然后找到最大处 ...
- abort 用法讨论
同事说: TT***.factary( procedure() begin .... abort; .... end)大家在TTask中不建议用abort因为难以控制,我测试 ...
- strncpy,strcpy
strncpy不会为des自动添加“\0” strcpy遇空结束,自动添加结束符 结论: 1.使用strcpy时一定不能用于无结束符的字符串,因为strcpy依赖\0判断源字符串的结束 2.使用str ...
- Redis 数据类型总结—String
1.1 数据类型 Redis常用五种数据类型:string, hash, list, set, zset(sorted set). Redis内部使用一个redisObject对象来 ...
- Masonry小结
一,容易混淆的问题 1.make.left.equal(xxx)的参数若为某个控件,则默认为以该控件的 left 为基准对照. //these two constraints are exactly ...
- CSS3 动画
通过 CSS3,我们能够创建动画,这可以在许多网页中取代动画图片.Flash 动画以及 JavaScript. CSS3 动画 CSS3 @keyframes 规则 如需在 CSS3 中创建动画, ...
- makefile 笔记
1.Makefile中命令前的@和-符号 如果make执行的命令前面加了@字符,则不显示命令本身而只显示它的结果; Android中会定义某个变量等于@,例如 hide:= @ 通常make执行的命令 ...
- this, 你到底指向谁?
JS中, this的值到底是什么? 几个月之前, 拜读了<javascript语言精髓>, 里面对于这个问题, 做出了很好的解释... JS中, this的值取决于调用的模式, 而JS中共 ...