I'm writing medical software that has the potential to save lives and has a real, measurable social impact. That's hardly factory work; I think that's a gross misrepresentation of our craft.
So building MRI machines, x-ray machines, defibrillators, seat belts, and airbags isn't factory work because they save lives?
Software isn't built it's designed, then prototyped, then finalized. The guy on the assembly line isn't designing an MRI machine, that's already been done, he's screwing screws into place. Building implies it's done more than once in a repetitive fashion which is definitely not the case with software, software is written to overcome that.