software is not manufacture

by Karel Thönissen

In this discussion about SubText on Lambda the Ultimate, Koray Can made this interesting remark:

In the beginning the author says: programming is an embarrassment and a failure. Again and again I hear this and comparisons to other disciplines. Manufacturing microchips and building bridges have obvious material costs that justify strict quality control. Software management typically pushes on complexity and time to market, and they control the damage caused by resulting bugs via patches (viewed inexpensive as compared to recalls).

Far too often programming is compared to more conventional disciplines such as engineering, building bridges or developing hardware. Sometimes these discplines can be used metaphorically, but at some point the comparison fails miserably. ISO-900x, anyone? The economies of software development are totally different.