[zuckluni]

I disagree with the title. I've used waterfall and still found engineering hard.

Even you have a bulletproof requirements document, implementation and engineering still produces unforeseen eventualities and unexpected consequences.

I think software engineering is hard primarily because it's the coalface between abstract and concrete.

We're wired to be great at concrete, but capable at abstract. With software it's like we can get ourselves into a perfect storm of intractable-for-us problems.

Other forms of engineering, civil, mechanical, etc are still really hard, but I think we're better wired for them because they're less abstract, more concrete.

But in software, abstraction is part of your bread-and-butter daily-grind tool-kit.