nikolaifox.com

Modifying software gets very tough down the line. I have personally wrestled with projects where they continually changed the specs on me and were vague in the extreme. Yet software is modifiable after it is built. This was pointed out explicitly some decades ago, probably by Edsger W. Most construction, including buildings and notably bridges, being analog, do not have single point failure modes. If there is one bug or one interior design software hardware failure, a program that has been working for a long time can suddenly experience a catastrophic collapse. Software is digital and fragile. Programmers build a few word processors, to get the thing right, and once a small number of products are selected, it is distributed cheaply.