[SoftTalker]

"We make software just like how Ford makes cars".

People who say this kind of thing probably have no idea how Ford makes cars either. The assembly line is the last step. All the research, design, engineering, and testing happens before any sheet metal is stamped out. So the comparison might be more true than not, but unknowingly.

[Ma8ee]

Exactly. It's just that they mix up the steps. The last step, the assembly, is highly automated and usually very fast in software production, since it is done by a compiler (and the aptly named, assembler). The people involved are doing engineering and design, which is much harder to control.

[AnimalMuppet]

Not even that. It's done by the CD duplicator (or, these days, by the web server).

[Brian_K_White]

It's not true at all. In software, the factory line is nothing but cp or httpd and neither costs nor produces any value. In cars, the factory line both costs and produces all the value.

[jldugger]

> the factory line both costs and produces all the value.

I think the point OP is trying to make is that manufacturing and design are seperate steps with different workflows and expectations. And that the design step does have value, as without it your factory line has nothing particular to make or sell.

Nobody is sitting around Ford trying to make the clay modeling step faster or more error free, it's a design function. But there are hundreds of software execs out there trying to do exactly that. In part because cp and git and make and your other build tools that make up the factory line function are pretty much rock solid and cost optimized to nearly free.

[saltcured]

Wait, I thought it was the auto company financial services division that produces all the value.

The design, factory, supply chain, etc. is just the marketing arm for the loans...

[pseudohadamard]

> In software, the factory line is nothing but cp or httpd

Little-known fact, cp is actually an AI. I trained my cp AI on a copy of the gcc source code and asked it to write me a C compiler and it did! It was so accurate it even managed to reproduce gcc's bugs and quirks.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

> In cars, the factory line both costs and produces all the value.

Does that apply to phones?

[ambicapter]

Really? So all the designers and engineers at Ford who don't have an iota of a car built by the time they're done with their work aren't producing any value?

[Brian_K_White]

The design is like the electricity to the factory. You need it or else you get no cars at all, but it's a small percentage of the total resources consumed and produces no value at all directly.

[thephyber]

Marketing and finance are also very large components of cost and value, respectively.

It was a short pithy sentence, but it does have a kernel of truth to it.

[agentictrustkit]

Yeah I don't think enough people talk about this. AI makes your existing process faster, but it doesn't make a broken process correct. We've seen this at every inflection point — cloud, agile, microservices, now AI. My bet is that the orgs that wil win are the ones NOT with the best models but those that know how to ship! If your lead time from commit to prod is six months, all Cursor does is let you write the wrong thing faster.

[qznc]

Yes, they confuse development with manufacturing/assembly.

[AngryData]

Atleast 90% of the time whenever someone mentions Ford it is to spew out Ford PR garbage they once heard that they took as real history instead of the marketing it really is. It really should be held up as an example of how powerful well designed PR is and the myths it generates.