The point is, though, that you never just want a piece of wood with a hole in it. You want a piece of wood that has a hole in the middle so you can put a rope through the hole, tie a knot, and make a swing.
Or you want a piece of wood that has a hole at the end so you can drive a post through it and have some sort of horizontal-piece-of-wood-sticking-out-from-a-post deal. I don't know. I'm not a wood expert. The point is that you have to think about what you're really doing, and that carpentry is about way more than the manual skill of working with wood. The parallel with software engineering is pretty clear when phrased this way, yes?
Maybe it's part of a table. The piece of wood, not software engineering. The hole is where the table's leg will attach. If you just up and drill where you please, you'll probably not end up with a useful table.
In that case, I think a better question to ask would be along the lines of "What function does this piece of wood serve?". Once you know what it'll be used for, you can demonstrate that you know where to drill the hole without having to ask where.
Or you want a piece of wood that has a hole at the end so you can drive a post through it and have some sort of horizontal-piece-of-wood-sticking-out-from-a-post deal. I don't know. I'm not a wood expert. The point is that you have to think about what you're really doing, and that carpentry is about way more than the manual skill of working with wood. The parallel with software engineering is pretty clear when phrased this way, yes?
Maybe it's part of a table. The piece of wood, not software engineering. The hole is where the table's leg will attach. If you just up and drill where you please, you'll probably not end up with a useful table.