The Hidden Tradeoffs Behind software Design

Non-software engineers most often misunderstand a few practical realities. I’ve encountered these:

“The code is the product”
A lot of the real work is everything around the code: requirements, edge cases, security, performance, testing, deployment, monitoring, maintenance, and upgrades. A feature that “works on my machine” is not the same as something reliable in production.

Small changes can be high risk
A change that looks minor in the UI can touch many systems behind it (data models, APIs, permissions, downstream reports). The cost is often in preventing breakage, not typing the new code.

Ambiguity is expensive
Software needs precise definitions. Vague requirements (“make it faster,” “more user-friendly,” “support all cases”) turn into rework. Good design starts with clear inputs, outputs, constraints, and success metrics.

Technical debt is real and measurable
Shortcuts taken to ship quickly often create ongoing costs: slower development, more bugs, harder onboarding, and bigger outages. Paying down debt isn’t “nice to have” if the system is growing.

Big one: they think “design” is the diagram you draw before you build. In software, the real design work is what happens after you ship and reality shows up.

A few common misunderstandings I see:
• People underestimate how much time goes to edge cases, data, and integrations (the stuff nobody screenshots in a slide deck)
• They assume the hard part is writing code, when the hard part is changing it safely later without breaking everything
• They expect “clean architecture” to be a universal good, when it’s always a tradeoff against speed, simplicity, and what the team can actually maintain
• They don’t realize performance, reliability, and security are design decisions, not “we’ll optimize it later” tasks

Curious though: what kind of “non-software engineers” are you thinking about here (mechanical, civil, electrical, etc.)? The misunderstandings are slightly different depending on the mindset they’re coming from.

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