The first sofware I wrote in 1985 was job cost accounting, the second a job estimating program. That was not for someone else, I have been estimating, budgeting and building since 1980, and doing so without computers to handle the minutiae is a pain.

It is interesting how little things changed when I migrated to building software, from building buildings. From a budgetary standpoint, the differences are not so great. The proecesses are so similar you can almost use the same eoftware, only the categories and cost retios seem to be very different.

See also project management and bottom line, I am accustomed to running from a budget, meeting a schedule, etc. It is sometimes harder in software than in the building business, but only because the practice of establishing requirements is so relaxed, er uh, I mean unrefined.