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Barring apocalypse, Sagrada Familia will still be standing five hundred years from now. UNIX will be mostly forgotten by then - in the same way blacksmithing and carriage building are mostly forgotten today.

That's the whole point of cathedral projects - make it beautiful and build it right because you're building for the future. Not to scratch your own personal boredom itch, or to nail a bit of wood to another bit of wood because why not.

That has zero to do with development style, and everything to do with medium. There have been plenty of cathedral software projects that are already lost, much less lost 500 years from now.

btw, the (purported) world's oldest running continuous market -- happens to also be called a bazaar -- was constructed in 1455, so it's been running in excess of 500 years.

> UNIX will be mostly forgotten by then

UNIX may not be the best example for your argument: it's often criticized because of how long its legacy has endured, with some people arguing it's time to move on to more modern visions of what an operating system should be. So UNIX, for good or bad, is indeed the software equivalent of an ancient cathedral which endures from ages past.

Indeed, UNIX will definitely not be forgotten 5 centuries from now (if humanity still exists by then). It will at least be in the history books, taught about in schools, and some quirky people will for sure be running it as a "retro computing" hobby.

Still, looking at ancient constructions, 150 years is a huge amount of time. Most roman constructions that have survived to today were built at most in a single life time - at an extreme end, it seems that the Hagia Sophia was built in 5 years. The more than 4500 years old Great Pyramid of Giza was built in a single pharaoh's lifetime.

Which is to say, engineering culture and goals can absolutely degrade over time in terms of productivity, even with great increases in construction technology.

Agreed. People don't flourish inside cathedrals, no matter how attractive they look.

> Agreed. People don't flourish inside cathedrals, no matter how attractive they look.

Nor do they flourish inside supermarkets, these buildings are designed for something else. Walking in St. Peter's in Roma gives a sensation of awe even to devout atheists, something I can't imagine the local Walmart doing.

Didn't Yeltsin experience something akin to a religious conversion on seeking an American supermarket? We're only numb to the miracle because we see it every day.

Off-topic, but all that the St Peter's Cathedral in Rome gave me was of obscene wealth and displays of wealth.

For awe, I would much more recommend the Pantheon, especially knowing that you're stepping into a building for which 500 years is barely more than a quarter of its history.

> Off-topic, but all that the St Peter's Cathedral in Rome gave me was of obscene wealth and displays of wealth.

Even further off-topic, but if you are referring to the big church in the Vatican adjacent to St. Peter’s Square, it is Saint Peter’s Basilica; it is the second-ranking of the four major basilicas but it is not (though many tourist-focussed lists of cathedrals include it) a cathedral.

The cathedral that is the seat of the Bishop of Rome (and also the first-ranking of the four major basilicas) is the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran.

Yes, you are right.

Of course, the Pantheon that stands today is not even the original, it was rebuilt at least twice, from what I can tell.

One of the emperors that rebuilt it still kept the "Agrippa did this" inscription, you don't mess with Augustus.

I think if everyone is simply rowing in one direction, you end up with a favela - functional, but not great in an earthquake or flood.

I once talked to a CEO who expected and wanted an important piece of software to be rewritten every few months so it could use the app framework du jour.

I wonder how many other shops there are where implementations aren't designed to last long, especially in web development.

> I love the sagrada familia un Barcelona, but it's still under construction after 150 years. Building cathedrals maybe not the way.

Interestingly, this may also be a sign of declining engineering. The Hagia Sophia, the largest church in the world for 1000 years, was apparently built in 5 years (532- 537).

In general, it seems Rome was able to build fantastically persistent buildings in fractions of the time required later. Even today I wonder if we actually have the engineering and logistics practices required to build buildings that would survive thousands of years in a under a decade - of which the Romans had several.

>>Interestingly, this may also be a sign of declining engineering.

Or it could simply mean that not enough resources were committed to the project.

500 AD, that's about the time the Western Roman Empire collapsed, of course the Byzantines needed a gigantic project to show they were the real Roman empire now. It's probably more similar to the Manhattan Project.

> Maybe this was acceptable language in 2012, but it was still having a bad effect on people, arrogance cannot substitute argumentation.

I find it refreshingly honest, vivid, cathartic and spot on. Complaints from the peanut gallery just make me love it even more.

In 9 or 90 years, maybe they'll think all of our 2021 eggshell tiptoeing to be completely useless drivel devoid of insight and dump it down the memory hole. Sensibilities change!

>I love the sagrada familia un Barcelona, but it's still under construction after 150 years. Building cathedrals maybe not the way.

Well, they are not jus nailing two pieces of wood.

Also, if I were to build a cathedral today I would use 3d printing and CNC milling machines as much as possible.

Like this?

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-31923259

For something like a cathedral, having it take a long time is a feature. Of course you could slap something of the same size together from prefab concrete blocks and some 3d printed stuff, but you would "just" get a soulless building with no effort from the faithful invested in it.

A real cathedral is a monument for the ages, bigger than any individual who worked on it. Something for entire generations to pour their effort into so that at the end of construction you can say: "my grandfather started building this, my parents worked on it, I worked on it and during the time of my great-grandchildren this building will still be as magnificent as it is now".

Trying to build it as quick and cheap as possible is simply not the point for a cathedral.