[barnaby]

In the 1950's and 1960's there emerged a fad for giving personality tests to people, and the then train those who passed to become software programmers that would work in a factory.

A lot of the really bad practices that hit us with long-term costs come from this era... and a lot of the misconceptions we have about programmers being nerdy anti-social types come from those personality tests, because they didn't test whether you'd be a good programmer... they tested whether you would sit in a production line and push buttons repetitively without talking to others.

So... no, I don't think that a return to the factory model is the solution. It's been tried and it really did not work. I think that software is big enough of a shift that it warrants removing the traditional business hierarchies and ceremonies of authority, and to create a new model that is not the old factory model.

[eternalban]

You misunderstood "software factory" reference. The reference was to meta-programming, not a room full of factory workers :) Think Japanese robot factories.