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In short, no.
What was built is not what you would call a full hospital. It's more a stripped-down "hospital" with well understood modules that could be mass-produced and assembled like Lego.
The same with a railroad, where everything is a known, small, and easily assembled.
The skyscraper was the same way. A simple skyscraper, with nearly every floor the same, easily mass-produced, brought to the site and stacked. Is it up to the standards that we would use? No.
Seriously, have you seen some of the software that comes out of China? China doesn't build software like they build those buildings.
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Dave Kreskowiak wrote: China doesn't build software like they build those buildings.
Maybe they need construction cheerleaders?
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Espressif (a fabless semiconductor company out of China) makes decent software for their MCU products. The ESP-IDF for the most part is well thought out, and easier to code against than many other embedded software frameworks.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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All these examples show building speed, not design speed. No one said how long it took to design the skyscraper, the railroad or the hospital. In our field, writing a program is making a design not a product; the build phase is up to a compiler/linker and those have tremendous speed and are incredibly cheap. Let's not compare apples and oranges.
Mircea
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You beat me to it. If there was a blueprint that was 100% thorough, already done and thought out, etc. then in theory that could happen. But, software dev is never like that. People want change and customization when they hire custom dev work... otherwise why hire devs. So, in reality that theory never holds up.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: But, software dev is never like that. People want change and customization when they hire custom dev work
Totally agree.
The comparison I was making before (design = writing programs, build = compiling/linking) is not mine. I read it somewhere but I find it very true and it also "explains" other differences between software projects and construction projects. Stuff like why software piracy is a lot more prevalent than bridge or house piracy. You can get plans for my house from city hall but building it is still gonna cost you a good chunk of money. Meanwhile if you get my source code, building it takes mere seconds.
Also changes like adding 10 meters to a bridge, or an entire traffic lane: this is done, but the result is a new bridge and it will be built in 30-40 years when the current one was amortized. That's because building is so expensive. For software, building is incredibly cheap and people are asking for new versions all the time, ignoring the cost of design.
Mircea
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In a word, no.
As someone else mentioned here, building software is equivalent to the design phase of building hardware. I guarantee that the design team for the railway took longer than 9 hours to plan the railway, and that adding people to the design team would not have materially shortened the design process.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I think "built" is the wrong use of words. I would use "assembled". If the plans are done, and you just need to implement according to an established standard by assembling pre-established components according to a pre-established pattern. . . then yes.
Kind of the way that building a car can be done by hand, but usually it's done on a production "assembly" line.
That's one of the tantalising possibilities of low code environments.
But just because, you can, doesn't mean that anyone can, or that the results are spectacular. Methinks doing work very rapidly has implications with regard to quality, and what might be accepted and acceptable.
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I have limited experience re/ large software projects. I was imagining an initial lengthy process of design specifying all or as many as possible of the classes functions etc. required in terms of their interfaces only leaving details of implementation to each of the 100,000 assigned programmers. So no pre-established components rather pre-specified components.
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You confuse building with planning.
In software building is actually compilation/bundling or running software step. Programming is planning like planning layout of tracks or planning rooms, which equipment should be where etc..
How long did it take to make plans for railroad or hospital? Keep in mind they most likely had already existing plans like having plans for emergency hospital ready in case they need them. But creating those plans most likely took much longer or those plans were reused from existing ones.
Most likely all building components were prepared beforehand and no one counted time how much it takes to align stuff before you can "build a railroad in only 9 hours" - I can say by bringing in tools and materials for 3 months or more in advance.
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That is like asking if 9 women can have a baby in a month 
Hogan
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Yes. It could be.
As pointed out previously, the design, structure, materials, etc. used for buildings are all standard. You don't have 40 different companies each with their own 'unique' way to build a building/room/wall/floor/etc. Each building may have slight modifications based on needs, but are generally minor modifications not greatly affecting the overall timeline of the build.
Yet in the software world, there are multiple 'unique' systems for financial institutions, purchasing, inventory, medical, insurance, etc. All the systems of same-type are primarily providing the same service but developed/programmed differently.
Software could be simplified to the extent of building a building if a single programming language could be developed and used to build a standard base system/application, and standard add-on modules, and a tool to modify the standard modules as needed, be it drag-drop, editing, etc. Then projects could be completed in much faster, reducing time and costs.
There would only be one financial system, one purchasing system, etc. Just modify it as needed, or pay for the features as needed.
But this would make all current languages obsolete. Many would loose jobs since the reduced need of programmers knowing defunct languages, except to keep current systems maintained. There would also be a reduction of duplicate developement projects, reduced need of project managers, architects. AI would also gain a stronger foot-hold in development based on the new standard language. If a bank could ask AI online to produce for them a system with x,y,z features, it would be like ordering a fast-food burger, hold the onions, add cheese and bacon.
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The thousands-of-programmers model assumes that the most time-consuming part of software development is typing the code into an editor. Designing the software is really the biggest piece of work, and it is more difficult to serialize because of the need to agree on a contract between any two communicating parts. Building software as pipelines or loosely coupled modules can help with this, but there is only so much available concurrency in the design process.
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I hurt my back so my activites are limited. I am cleaning some old hand tools that belonged to my grandfathers.
I have a pair of wire cutters stamped BELL SYSTEM (which was THE telephone company in the US once upon a time). They are also stamped F.E. LINDSTROM SWEDEN on the other side.
Research (ok, just Google search) tells me that the Bell System had high quality tools made to their specifications for their service personnel. These particular wire cutters look to be at least 60 years old.
I've seen similar tools for US auto manufacturers, as well as IBM labeled tools carried by IBM's customer service representatives.
I'm curious as to whether putting business logos with tools made to a customer's specifications was just a US thing or was once a common business practice around the world.
Best Wishes - Craig
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Here in Australia, the only "customer"-branded tools I can recall were for government agencies.
PMG (Postmaster General's Department - Postal and Telegraph/telephone before the big split-up)
/|\ Broad arrow for Department of Defence (probably so they could pinch pommie ones!)
Various utilities and railways (all government owned in those days).
I worked alongside IBM and other mainframe servicemen half a century ago, and don't remember ever seeing the branding you mention.
And working on interfacing projects, we often had to sort our tools from theirs at the end of the day.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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My Dad started working for SW Bell in the mid 1960s, right out of high school and retired after 37 years. I remember the Bell System stamp on his tools, but don't recall the manufacturer stamps. The type of pliers you are referring to, he would call dikes. (diagonal cutters...for cutting and stripping)
My grandfather worked in aviation repair and had the coolest pliers I'd ever seen...safety wire twisters/cutters.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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Quote: safety wire twisters/cutters.
Still have a pair of those, from the 50's, also a "yankee screwdriver" from before electric tools.
I have some tools from my father, lineman's pliers that are approaching a century old. Alas, I am a pack rat. 
OTOH, I have a (very expensive) ergo keyboard that makes a big difference to my hands.
>64
It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
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I found a lineman's handset by a TNI when i was a kid. It was basically a phone in bag with clips on it for attaching to the leads.
Labeled with some bell company logo.
I probably should have found somewhere to turn it in, but that would have been work, and I thought the thing was cool.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Craig Robbins wrote: I'm curious as to whether putting business logos with tools made to a customer's specifications was just a US thing or was once a common business practice around the world.
No, it is a fairly common practice.
Putting the customers name on custom tools is for telling people where the tool was stolen from.
Lindström as a company is still around producing industry specific tools of high quality, often to customer specification.
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I'm still using a set of Lindstrom side cutters that date from the mid 80s. Still sharp and cutting true.
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Wordle 1,134 4/6*
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Wordle 1,134 4/6*
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"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
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In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Wordle 1,134 5/6
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For some reason, this was more difficult than it should've been 
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Wordle 1,134 4/6
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Ok, I have had my coffee, so you can all come out now!
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