I was toying with the analogy of "building things" vs. "building software" the other day. I've always felt that comparing software with architecture, building

I was toying with the analogy of "building things" vs. "building software" the other day. I've always felt that comparing software with architecture, building a car etc. is what people naturally reach for since it's something they're familiar with in the physical world and much of the same terminology is used. I don't think that software is at that point, though. Physical things "play nice" together because they are part of the physical world. Materials have characteristics that are inherent and don't need to be conceived of where as the way things behave and interact in software needs to be defined and constructed entirely by humans. I guess one could argue that happens to a certain extent in the world of materials science but ... I don't really think it holds up. I arrived at a point where I started to think of building software as writing a novel. Once you start to use that as an analogy, it doesn't seem so weird that it's hard and takes ages, because so does writing a novel. In a novel, one must define the entire world, and one can make the choice of using/re-using story lines or doing something original. People that trot out formulaic drivel make better money than the tortured geniuses on average, but the few tortured geniuses that manage to hit, hit it big and serve as an example to all the others. I kind of stopped thinking about it at this point and got back to work, but I think that using that analogy, things really start to make more sense ... what do you reckon?