An unfinished product is still a product.

If I sell you a PC in parts, it's still a PC, you just have to assemble it.

If you're a statistician and I give you 10,000 peoples' poll results in separate files, you have the product, you just have to compile the statistics. Then the sociologist or politician or whoever interprets the statistics.

At all stages it's a product, but it's not finished until the end user can us ie.

A design is not an unfinished product. It's a plan for how to take raw materials and turn them into an unfinished product, with the idea that a finished product can then be made from those.

The design is sometimes not even concerned with turning the unfinished product into the finished product, as that's sometimes a well-defined production process.

I think the basic terms proposed are somewhat flawed. I believe very few people think of programming, bricklaying, carpentry or masonry as "crafts". People think of gluing flowers together or carving soap as crafts. I think people think of them more as "trades". Traditionally, you have the aristocracy/idle rich/statesmen, then the top working rich/merchants/company owners, then the professionals like physicians/teachers/attorneys/engineers, then the tradesmen like carpenters/masons/brewers/clockmakers/surveyors (and in modern times farmers), then the skilled laborers such as the apprentices to the above and the blacksmiths/weavers/tailors/bakers/butchers/soapmakers/herders, then the unskilled laborers who do brute force work.

There is a use of "craft" which fits, but I don't think that's the most popular connotation of that word. To think of programming from someone else's design as a trade and to think of designing software as architecture or engineering I think makes sense.



Christopher E. Stith

In reply to Re: Re^6: Programming Versus Engineering by mr_mischief
in thread (OT) Programming as a craft by revdiablo

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