Software, Soft

I’m against attempts to bring discipline to SE akin to other engineering disciplines. Like the SEMAT movement. Software is just so much softer than materials of other engineering disciplines, that it allows for so much more freedom and agility (as indicated by success of agile). Attempts to prevent failures also prevent successes, and leads to stagnation. I don’t mind if someone creates those restrictions for themselves, but just hate when they try imposing such huge restrictions on me. Yes, it’s true in software it’s so easy to shoot yourself in the foot, and such disciplines can help to prevent that from happening. You may say this is an “Adult” approach, as opposed to “childish”. But there is just so much potential in Software, even child cannot embrace it, not speaking about adult. Bad practices will simply go away because they are not working, and there is no need to present me with The One And Only set of right practices, beyond which I should not be looking further. Software principles/guidelines/methodologies/etc should be soft.