Yes. And that's ok! The world ran on artisans for hundreds of years. It's even better than that right now, because we already have factories: the programs. Do

Yes. And that's ok! The world ran on artisans for hundreds of years. It's even better than that right now, because we already have factories: the programs. Do we need factories to build the factories? I don't think we're there yet, not to mention we don't know how to build these meta-factories right. Quoting myself from OP: "Libraries with non-trivial functionality take a long time to get right, and in the meantime they are produced more like guilds of craftsmen than factories. (Even if the products themselves permit factory-like operation at scale.) In that initial bake-in period we are ill-served by conventional metaphors of software components, building blocks, etc. We should be dealing more in vertically-integrated self-contained systems rather than plug-and-play libraries. More OpenBSD, less `gem install`." Efficiency is great, but it's not the only thing to optimize for.