[TheForge] Re: guardrails and handrails

[Andy Vida]

Charle B Vincent wrote:
> 
> Hate to bust your bubble here Andy, but blacksmithing and software are
> still more art than not, so they are never done.  In both, it seems your
> perceptions of the task at hand change in the doing of it and your best
> ideas happen three quarters of the way through the job.  

	I'm well aware of this and I have been forunate to have
	estaimated very well with that in mind.  As for art, 
	project management is still an art in the IT world, but
	the coding is really not much more than a clerical task
	anymore.  There is some cleverness still to be engaged in
	at times, but not very much.

> The real skill is in the
> knowing when to say no more and the having the discipline to act on it.

	This I hold in great abundance.  The problem has been that
	the clients do not.  The real art, for me anyhow, has been
	in keeping the client aware that they are gambling and that
	the responsilbility is theirs.  Soemtimes it works, but most
	of the time it doesn't because no matter how badly they
	screw the pooch, the contractors will always get the blame.

	Tha way of our world, I suppose. :)