[mtrower]

Yeah, it’s not quite the same.

On the other hand the tools are mostly very simple and highly standardized. The simple tools are applied to the problem through a combination of applied experience and constructed jigs. I guess the equivalent in the software world would be classic non-fat Unix as your base tools, and building your own libraries and toolkits as your jigs (no or very limited third party deps), while aggressively avoiding complexity. You’ll get reliability this way; of course, there are serious tradeoffs.

Don’t misunderstand me, though. I agree that the modern software treadmill is horrible and needs to be tamed.