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Software already went through the industrial revolution. To take your analogy, the car designers (the ones who work to build the prototype) are all craftsmen. O
by vaidhy 12y ago
Software already went through the industrial revolution. To take your analogy, the car designers (the ones who work to build the prototype) are all craftsmen. Once the car is designed and we make copies of it, that is the industrial process. In software, the industrial process is trivial.
The car designers who build the first prototype, tweak it, make it actually work would call themselves craftsmen. They might use parts of other car models (same as we use libraries), they might duct tape something (same as we hack things), but the fact remains they are craftsmen.
I would also like to point out to one of the better arguments for this from Dijkstra - https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/E... - you actually have to think across many abstractions and as a result, writing software remains a craftsmanship.
- chton 12y agoI disagree that in software process the manufacturing is trivial. Software is so often designed as more general systems, that need to be configured and installed and integrated, etc. Those steps aren't part of the design process anymore, they're specific to every sale, to every client. They are what I would consider a manufacturing step. I do agree that car designers could call themselves craftsmen, their jobs are closest to what craftsmen used to be and do. But they don't anymore, they have evolved into new processes and new systems. That is the evolution I think software is due for.