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> The equivalent of a car being assembled is a compiler building an executable from source I disagree. The equivalent of a car being assembled is copying the b
by BerislavLopac 6y ago
> The equivalent of a car being assembled is a compiler building an executable from source
I disagree. The equivalent of a car being assembled is copying the binary executable from one storage medium to another; building an executable from source would be the equivalent of building the production process for a single car model, while coding is the equivalent of designing and testing that model.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoThis is where the analogy breaks down somewhat - so I propose you imagine a universe in which `cp` doesn't exist and you have to build each copy of an executable from scratch :). (Perhaps you're signing each copy with a different key, or something.) I insist on connecting compilation to construction of individual cars, because the source code corresponds to the engineering plans of a car, and not to the plans of the production process.
- pas 6y agoSure, every car has a unique VIN and every running process is a different constellation of electrons (or just the one, if one-electron universe is assumed). But looking at getting functionality to users, looking at the business problem, the time/effort/risk is spent on car design and software development, and much less time and risk is in the copying business. (Yes, Tesla recently had car copying problems, but they brute forced their problem, and now they are pretty good at factory copying too.)
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoThis analogy is flawed, you can't capture insight from the flaws in it.