Ralf Sudelbücher has an interesting post up on the nature of software development. He asks a lot of good questions, ending with these:

If you doubt the immaturity of the software development trade, think a minute about the following:

• Why is deployment, i.e. handing the product to the customer, such a pain?
• Why do we still store the majority of code in text files which are hard to manipulate?
• Why do we still try to solve all those different problems with just a handful of different languages?
• Why do so many software projects fail (in comparison to building houses or producing movies)?

Read the whole thing - those final questions are fronted by some good writing.