Building For Success!

For the last several months I’ve been working for a local carpenter, building a 10,000 sq-ft. house. It’s hard-work, but it’s also (usually) been a lot of fun! So how does this relate to Software-Engineering? Well, funny you should ask because I was just thinking about the same thing and here’s the answer!

Why I Wanted to do Construction:

1. Take a break from the office to “recharge”.
2. Always wanted to pickup wood-working / carpentry as a hobby -
3. …Because it runs in the family.

How does this Apply to Software?:

1. It’s all just “Design and Build”.
2. Builders have been doing multi-year and multi-million dollar projects far longer than software-developers.
3. The project-management and people-management challenges are similar.
4. Some days are “group-work”, some days it’s a “solo-project” but your still part of the team.
5. The project life-cycle is similar: (design, model, foundation, outer-shell, inner-framework, detail-work, facade/interface, testing, debugging, maintenance…)
6. It’s all just Good Honest Hard Work, (Doing it outside it just hotter, colder, windier, wetter, dustier, dirtier, and all around more unpredictable)!