As a subdiscipline of project management, some regard the management of software development akin to the management of manufacturing, which can be performed by someone with management skills, but no programming skills. John C. Reynolds rebuts this view, and argues that software development is entirely design work, and compares a manager who cannot program to the managing editor of a newspaper who cannot write.John C. Reynolds, Some thoughts on teaching programming and programming languages, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 43, Issue 11, November 2008, p.108: "Some argue that one can manage software production without the ability to program. This belief seems to arise from the mistaken view that software production is a form of manufacturing. But manufacturing is the repeated construction of identical objects, while software production is the construction of unique objects, i.e., the entire process is a form of design. As such it is closer to the production of a newpaper [sic] — so that a software manager who cannot program is akin to a managing editor who cannot write."
