Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Pet_Ant 665 days ago
On my current project the way totals and taxes are applied different on two different screens leading to slightly different totals. No one knows which one is actually correct or used by the customers in practice. Thus, you could say there is no correct answer.

Most software development is wrestling with malleable requirements.

As the old joke goes: writing software from requirements is like walking on water, both are easy when frozen

1 comments

> No one knows which one is actually correct or used by the customers in practice.

Automating BS is bad.

> Thus, you could say there is no correct answer.

I object to such fatalism.

Kind of the whole point of computers is to find and eliminate such ambiguities.

I don't mind playing irrational games for entertainment, but they are "no basis for a system of government", eh?

> Most software development is wrestling with malleable requirements.

Sure but that's no excuse for automating irrational systems. There's no written requirement that the math to compute totals and taxes shall be mysterious?