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I agree, IVE talks about spending a lot of time designing "fixtures" to hold parts during the various CNC operations. That is completely analogous to spending time creating macros, scripts, development tools, etc. Essentially creating tools that will help create tools.

Computer science is a necessary and essential component of software engineering.

Designing software properly _is_ "proper" design. Just a different set of variables.

Notes on the Synthesis of Form, by Christopher Alexander, can't be recommended enough for seeing a teapot as an elegant system / understanding the parallels between physical & software design.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_Synthesis_of_Form