"The craft approach has survived because building software systems has been a sellers market, customers have paid what it takes because the potential benefits h

"The craft approach has survived because building software systems has been a sellers market, customers have paid what it takes because the potential benefits have been so much greater than the costs." Gotta disagree here. SW dev has never been a seller's market in the way that eg the property market or job market can be a seller's or buyer's market. There are powerful effects in the market making that a massive simplification. Firstly platform network effects; think of the browser wars for instance. Secondly, open source: a lot can be had for "free". Thirdly, lowest bidder: John Glenn famously commented, when asked what he thought about sat on top of an Apollo rocket, "every component has been built by the lowest bidder". Fourthly, novelty: a significant amount of SW dev is about building things that haven't been built before. Which can be more like a research project than eg putting up a new apartment block, or bridge, or designing and productionising a new car.