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saved by2 people, first byGeorgi Dimitrov on 2008-02-10, last byEddie Osh on 2008-02-16

  • Programming is not an industrial activity. It is a unique activity that has a lot in common with pre-industrial craft, and yet has a lot of unique characteristics that I call “post-industrial craft”. Programs are made one at a time, and each piece is different. It’s not scalable and it’s not formulaic.
  • Programmers are draftsmen. However, they are different than pre-industrial workers. They are self-directed and know better than managers what to do. They respect intelligence, not authority. You can’t tell them what to do, you can only coerce them. Their satisfaction comes from the quality of their work. Unlike pre-industrial craftsmen, post-industrial craftsmen are smarter and more highly trained
  • This creates a conflict because management is industrial. It’s based on command-and-control. It’s tracked quantitatively through cost accounting, based on the idea that you purchase raw materials and you purchase labor that transforms those materials into offerings, and you scale up with factories, and that’s how you profit. That simply doesn’t exist in the world of software.
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