> Steve McConnell in Code Complete (a book which criticizes the widespread use of the waterfall model) refers to design as a “wicked problem” – a problem whose requirements and limitations cannot be entirely known before completion. The implication is that it is impossible to get one phase of software development “perfected” before time is spent in “reconnaissance” working out exactly where and what the big problems are.
I used to be an architect before I became a programmer, so since I started programming I noticed I hag a big advantage over my peers when it comes to the high level designing and structuring a program.
Thing is, the more experienced I become at programming, the less of that I end up doing. I more and more tend to break everything down into tiny parts that can all work independently and be composed into bigger bits. Most of my career I've used OO languages, especially C#, but nowadays I usually avoid using a lot of the features of OO, like inheritance, and just try and make everything from tiny little methods (functions) big things are just made from several of those methods in sequence and really big things are just made from several of the big ones.
From a development perspective it means I can just go ahead and start writing useful little snippets of code and start composing them together into bigger and bigger features as I go. So, I'm switching from a top-down style to more of a bottom-up one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem