[DenisM]

To this day this piece from 1987 remains one of the most wanted pieces of wisdom:

I still remember the jolt I felt in 1958 when I first heard a friend talk about building a program, as opposed to writing one. In a flash he broadened my whole view of the software process. The metaphor shift was powerful, and accurate. Today we understand how like other building processes the construction of software is, and we freely use other elements of the metaphor, such as specifications, assembly of components, and scaffolding.

The building metaphor has outlived its usefulness. It is time to change again. If, as I believe, the conceptual structures we construct today are too complicated to be specified accurately in advance, and too complex to be built faultlessly, then we must take a radically different approach. Let us turn nature and study complexity in living things, instead of just the dead works of man. Here we find constructs whose complexities thrill us with awe. The brain alone is intricate beyond mapping, powerful beyond imitation, rich in diversity, self-protecting, and selfrenewing. The secret is that it is grown, not built.

[MalcolmDwyer]

Cool quote. Maybe now we "grow" software, in the sense that any application consists of probably thousands of interconnected systems/libraries/frameworks that work together in a way that is organic or emergent.