Hardcoding the “Smart” Factory

“Hardcoding” is the practice of starkly simplifying program logic to the end of producing software more effectively while sacrificing its versatility and generalizability. Drawing on concepts from science and technology studies and software engineering, this paper develops a case study of hardcoding for the “smart” factory—a kind of factory that leverages the newest information technologies to boost productivity, flexibility, and global competitiveness in existing manufacturing companies. The analysis of the ethnographic material collected through participant observation of a smart factory project in a large technology company suggests that hardcoding serves multiple purposes, which amount to the “specification of ignorance” in software development. In this sense, hardcodes reflect the “yet-to-be-knowns” in a software’s source code while conveying a project’s history of challenges and compromises.