Desenvolvimento de software igual Jardinagem, não engenharia!

Essa vai doer fundo na alma de alguma pessoas...
Gostei muito da entrevista de Dave Thomas, ou melhor, Pragmatic Dave como foi dito na Agile2007, feita para a Artima Developers por Bill Venners , acredito que todos deveriam ler na íntegra o artigo.
Mas uma coisa me chamou a atenção durante a leitura do texto (bastante longo por sinal): A tentativa de definição do desenvolvimento de software como sendo Jardinagem, não engenharia... simples não é mesmo? E pra mim acabou fazendo sentido.
Nas próprias palavras de Dave Thomas:

There is a persistent notion in a lot of literature that software development should be like engineering. First, an architect draws up some great plans. Then you get a flood of warm bodies to come in and fill the chairs, bang out all the code, and you're done. A lot of people still feel that way. I saw an interview in the last six months of a big outsourcing house in India where this was how they felt. They paint a picture of constructing software like buildings. The high talent architects do the design. The coders do the constructing. The tenants move in, and everyone lives happily ever after. We don't think that's very realistic. It doesn't work that way with software.

We paint a different picture. Instead of that very neat and orderly procession, which doesn't happen even in the real world with buildings, software is much more like gardening. You do plan. You plan you're going to make a plot this big. You're going to prepare the soil. You bring in a landscape person who says to put the big plants in the back and short ones in the front. You've got a great plan, a whole design.

But when you plant the bulbs and the seeds, what happens? The garden doesn't quite come up the way you drew the picture. This plant gets a lot bigger than you thought it would. You've got to prune it. You've got to split it. You've got to move it around the garden. This big plant in the back died. You've got to dig it up and throw it into the compost pile. These colors ended up not looking like they did on the package. They don't look good next to each other. You've got to transplant this one over to the other side of the garden.

Que tal?