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I've often wondered why the software industry as a whole is so biased towards automotive and factory metaphors eg Toyota JIT manufacturing and nobody ever talks

• ftio 7y ago
  There’s something to be learned from Toyota’s practices — the metaphor isn’t completely useless — but I think I agree that the auto manufacturing analogy has been stretched too far. Making software is not at all like making a hundred thousand of the same car. It’s more like custom-designing a hundred thousand distinct cars, all with slightly-to-drastically different body shapes, colors, interior features, purposes, and customers.
• ethagnawl 7y ago
  I think this is what you're alluding to, but it is shocking how small some of the NES teams mentioned in this book are! The teams that made Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers were comprised of ~five people and only one or two of them were programmers.
  • artsyca 7y ago
    Yes the teams were tiny and well dressed and working at the cutting edge of technology of the day building everything from the level of assembly I'm telling you these are the people to emulate not the factory practices at the other Japanese company Perhaps if building hardware it can be considered but the whole Toyota model is more about building a management structure around something that really doesn't need one