[gizmo686]

Craftsmanship is not dead in other industries in the same way it is being talked about for software.

Sure, that cheap desk that arrived in a flat box and got assembled by me and a screwdriver was mass produced in a factory. But it's design had way more expert craftsmanship put into it than would ever be feasible for a bespoke product. High upfront design cost, then mass produced at a low marginal cost.

That had been the state of art for software from the beginning. When you download Firefox, there is no expert programmer carefully building you an artisinal web browser. There is a CDN server sitting in a data center somewhere copying bytes out of its cache for you.

One of the things AI us threatening to do is replace the CAPEX craftsmanship, which has not happened at scale in other industries.

What AI has had more success at it replacing low end "artisinal" software; which is a category that has thus far been so uneconomical is essentially doesn't exist.

[beezlewax]

Do you honestly think an ikea desk has "more expert craftsmanship" than a hand crafted by a woodworker desk?

[bryanlarsen]

Definitely. Expert craftsmanship in cost optimization, in shipping optimization, in production/factory design and optimization, in material sourcing, in durability testing, in design for mass market appeal, in marketing material, in documentation, et cetera.

[dale_glass]

In some ways, sure.

The LACK (https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/lack-side-table-white-30449908/) is probably one of the most optimized pieces of furniture you can buy. There's no hand crafted desk that can be this cheap. A wood worker won't even get out of bed for $17.

Now is it an amazingly beautiful, rock solid, heirloom quality piece of furniture? No, but it's not trying to be that.

[jon_adler]

They also double as a nice and cheap server rack!

https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack

[Jensson]

Don't you think IKEA has expert engineers designing their furniture that will sell millions?

Programming is the equivalent to designing a factory, not carving out wood pieces.

[abahgat]

Some programming is the equivalent to designing a factory, some programming is the equivalent to carving out wood pieces.

I've worked in large organizations where a small number of staff+ engineers were approaching programming as factory, while many more engineers were obsessing about the details of their own narrowly-focused work and liked it that way.

It feels like the scale is tipping more towards the factory model and, understandably, not everyone is excited about that.

[iceflinger]

I'm not sure why this even needs to be the comparison?

Yes there is expert craftsmanship in the industrial scale design of ikea products, and yes there is expert craftsmanship in a bespoke, handmade wooden desk, but AI results in neither of these. It's cheap and disposable and tuned for putting up the appearance of something high quality without any of the actual intent that would be put behind either of the other two examples.

[toobulkeh]

This is a great argument for software factories. Writing the systems that build the system.