We're agreed that some software needs customization before it's usable by customers. (I've never noticed the apparent similarity in root words before. I'll have to look into that.)

My difficulty with the assembly line image is that, with a physical product, the assembly line uses interchangeable workers and strict processes to make identical copies of a physical product cheaply and efficiently.

Aside from an emotional reaction against the idea of treating programmers as interchangeable pieces, I cannot not see the "make identical copies" part of the process. That, to me, is the reason an assembly line is possible! It exists precisely for mass duplication!

Granted, there exist assembly lines dedicated to customization -- the worker who puts extra memory in laptops, for example -- but even then, the scope and breadth of the customizations are much, much smaller than in a software project.

They also can't be divorced from the physical aspect. Certainly Apple could ship all PowerBooks with a gigabyte of memory, but they can't change one master PowerBook and duplicate it for every customer without touching every machine.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Re: (OT) Programming as a craft by chromatic
in thread (OT) Programming as a craft by revdiablo

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.