I am old enough to have been writing software since 1976, and still do, although I am mostly a manager of managers now. My view is that dates are unfortunate (but sometimes unavoidable in the real world). But estimates are useful. They help flesh out risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity. They provide a set of approximations against which you can plot a glide path. And of course they must be frequently updated in the face of a changing reality. But that constantly evolving glide path is the “current best known” ship date, and that is very useful information (actually you can go deeper and look at its rate of change to give a better approximation).

It’s the job of engineering management to convey to upper management that these dates are projections only with certain levels of confidence.