>Software should be easily torn apart if needed. Loose coupling helps with that.
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>>I appreciate the extension of the analogy - however, a car engine is a highly tuned machine composed of fixed parts - somewhat quickly assembled - somewhat less easily disassembled for repairs. Should software not be less organic and more assembly? :)

Here's a point that often crosses my mind - if we did a detailed drawing of a flower - down to the cellular level - that drawing would show clear collections of parts that are loosely coupled. That is as it should be - at design time. At runtime, if one were to remove some of these parts, the plant would die. The point is - design time and runtime should be separate. I've seen many programmers extend their design time stuff into the runtime environment - SET DEFAULT as an example.