My understanding is that "outside of the genes information" is not just the color or the shape of the house, it is _essential_ instruction on how to build the house. Without it, you will not get something that qualifies as "house".
In the analogy, it is not 2 teams that build houses that are very different, it is two teams that use the same blueprint and one ends up with a house, and the other one ends up with a car. In this case, it is then correct that the "blueprint" is in fact not a blueprint.
Or another way of seeing it, you have the blueprint of the house, then you rip it apart in small pieces. Some of these pieces are the genes, other of these pieces are "out of the genes", such that if you just have the genes pieces, you just don't have enough information to build something that qualifies as a house. (funnily enough, you can say that the house builder can "fill the gaps" with his own knowledge, which would be a good example of "out of the genes" instructions)
As for your software analogy, again, some software have flags to turn between databases or frontend. But the point of the article is to explain that it is demonstrable that genes don't correspond to that: genes in itself are not enough to make blood cells by just turning a flag on or off, the same way a piece of wood is not a blueprint of both a chair and a door and that the carpenter is just a simple flag that will turn the piece of wood into a chair or a door. In this software analogy, it's like if you have one script file that just contains one basic function that neither does a database or a frontend. If you combine this script with other software pieces, you can have a database, if you combine this script with other software pieces, you can have a frontend.
In the analogy, it is not 2 teams that build houses that are very different, it is two teams that use the same blueprint and one ends up with a house, and the other one ends up with a car. In this case, it is then correct that the "blueprint" is in fact not a blueprint.
Or another way of seeing it, you have the blueprint of the house, then you rip it apart in small pieces. Some of these pieces are the genes, other of these pieces are "out of the genes", such that if you just have the genes pieces, you just don't have enough information to build something that qualifies as a house. (funnily enough, you can say that the house builder can "fill the gaps" with his own knowledge, which would be a good example of "out of the genes" instructions)
As for your software analogy, again, some software have flags to turn between databases or frontend. But the point of the article is to explain that it is demonstrable that genes don't correspond to that: genes in itself are not enough to make blood cells by just turning a flag on or off, the same way a piece of wood is not a blueprint of both a chair and a door and that the carpenter is just a simple flag that will turn the piece of wood into a chair or a door. In this software analogy, it's like if you have one script file that just contains one basic function that neither does a database or a frontend. If you combine this script with other software pieces, you can have a database, if you combine this script with other software pieces, you can have a frontend.