We never needed software factories

I have made up my mind about software factories: we don’t need them. A factory is designed to mass-produce identical items. The manufacturing process is optimized by defining separate, isolated tasks, performed efficiently by employees who do not need an end-to-end vision. We never needed that with software in the first place. The beauty of software is that replicating it — even with some personalization — costs virtually nothing. Sure, we can set up an automated system to resolve bug reports, but that is not a factory. We are not producing copies of the same item, we are modifying a shared asset. The analogy breaks down; this is closer to maintenance work. For R&D and feature work, very few of us even come close to fully leveraging what straightforward coding agents allow. Let us not put the cart before the horses with a different paradigm we probably do not need. What we got was a better workshop, with better tools; CNC machines instead of chisels. It was what we needed. Maybe you…

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