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humanity has a lot of experience building reliable one-offs, actually a lot more experience and a lot better experience than with modularity and bits and pieces. I'm a software engineer by trade but every time I look into industry (ship building, skyscrapers, etc) you realize: that aphorism about software engineers, woodpeckers and civilization was absolutely right.

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"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." ~ Gerald Weinberg.

For those who don't know what the quote is. I found it here[1].

[1]: http://www.ganssle.com/articles/programmingquotations.htm

Can you explain the colloquialism a bit? Is it a knock on modular design?

Having worked both in construction and software, modular design seems fairly common in both.

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