I spent ten years living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and in that time, five huge skyscrapers went up within a few blocks of where I lived. All of them residential, all of them of record-breaking height for residential buildings in North America. #
They started as huge holes in the ground, then pilings were driven deep into the earth, and concrete poured to form a foundation. Then the steel frame was attached to the pilings and it started to rise, and floor after floor of steel were built on top of the previous floors. As the building rose, crews came in to put up the inner walls of the building, water pipes, electric lines, sewer, the elevators, phone lines, internet, the inner walls, and then they put up an exterior, and glass in the windows, and while they were adding new steel beams on the (say) 50th floor, you could actually see people in the lobby of the building. It was a holy mess, with construction crews everywhere, just a complete mess, even so you could see clearly the outlines of something familiar coming together. #
But they kept building until the building was topped off, and all the various crews kept doing their jobs. There were no elevators above the 10th floor, everything still had to get to the top with a huge crane that was itself an engineering marvel. While all this was going on there were some demo units on the 5th floor and a rental office, all furnished, and one working elevator that was beautifully clean and functional, giving the impression that the building was ready to be occupied, but the truth was that it was still a long way from being done. But it could be used, in a way, for its intended purpose, people could imagine using it to sleep, eat, work, play -- all the things an apartment building could be used for, but it's not yet an apartment building, it's a construction site. #
Building a big piece of software is a lot like this, The construction company wants to know if you were killed by a random piece of metal being hauled up in a crane, but if you say that the buttons on one of the floors in the elevator actually closed the door when they were meant to open the door, they thank you for the report, but they weren't listening. They have a big job still ahead of them. #
Last update: Monday August 1, 2022; 10:51 PM EDT.
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