[zer8k]

A follow up analogy is more typical in my experience. The foreman says that we should reinforce the walls. The PMP certified 6 sigma ninja Project Manager insists that the reinforced walls aren't necessary because no one is going to put anything on the wall. We will revisit the wall later when we the city tells us to enforce new wall codes.

No more than 6 months later a contractor tried to add a shelf to the unenforced wall. The contractor was never aware of what was in the wall and assumed he could find a stud. What he thought was a stud was actually the stud finder pinging on a water pipe. The construction workers didn't have time to run any tests with stud finders so they just wired everything up at the behest of management and hit the wall a few times with a rubber mallet to see if it held up. The project was behind by a week already due to the plans getting to the job site late.

He pounds in the nails, hits the water pipe, collapses the wall and floods the house. The on staff construction crew lose their jobs, the VP gets a promotion for showing they did something about this egregious error, and they are replaced with contractors.

[gabereiser]

“All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again” - Six, BSG.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

Filching from Nietzsche, scriptwriters are lazy bums.

[ChainOfFools]

Either that or they were aware of what they were doing and left the extreme irony of what they chose to repeat as a kind of Easter egg for anyone familiar with the source.

Just kidding, they're lazy.

[pdimitar]

Pieces of art are repurposed all the time, I am sure Nietzsche took it from somebody living even further back in the past.

[tehnub]

Ecclesiastes 1:9

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

[B1FF_PSUVM]

Love Ecclesiastes, hands down the best bit of poetry in The Book.

Also "Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh" way before it exponentiated to the moon ...

Honourable mention to "For everything there is a season", as sung by The Byrds.

[usefulcat]

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose

[dontknowwhyihn]

“What happens once will never happen again. What happens twice will surely happen a third time.”

[gom_jabbar]

The eternal return of the same :)

[antonvs]

By that logic Nietzsche was also a lazy bum.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return

[bloqs]

"The PMP certified 6 sigma ninja project manager" had me rolling

[coding123]

this is also not a good analogy because building codes will often just require 20" O.C or 16" O.C studs and those are in the plans- drafted by a person that designed the home (self, architect, drafter). Reinforcements for shelves or cabinets are also part of the code for kitchen walls. Those are not to be expected in every location in the house.

The framers are locked into the house plans as far as stud distances and special framing members that are specified. County inspections will make sure that's all there.

House construction is far, far more standardized and strict that programmers coding crap code. It's not a good analogy.

[andrekandre]

  > House construction is far, far more standardized and strict that programmers coding crap code. It's not a good analogy.

the way i took it was that in home construction what they describe is completely absurd and yet that is how most businesses do software, so the contrast there drove the point home (no pun intended)

[ranting-moth]

"programmers coding crap code" vs. builder building crap houses. Both exists and both are very real.

In many ways the builders are even worse because they can usually hide the faults with caulk and paint if you want. Problem becomes evident when things start to leak or rot. That can be later but been causing damage in the meantime.

[weswilson]

I'd say it's a pretty good analogy, the details aren't perfect, but it gets the point across.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfEX6GUxfZM

Here's an example of an arguably good builder who had one team install a in-wall tank toilet, then another team drills right through the tank causing a leak. The repair work essentially meant ripping out everything and doing it over, even though there should have been mitigations in place to prevent it and having the plans/documentation available to everyone.

While construction has more standardization, planning, and inspections, it still relies on implementation and is going to have failures.

[sli]

No analogy is good when you dissect it to pieces. Being perfect encapsulations of reality is not the point of analogy, they are simply there to increase understanding.