I think you are both right in different ways. For an engineer, the problem can always be solved in new and more efficient ways, as long as new techniques appear. But from a product design standpoint, the optimum is hit when the solution for all cases is automated into defaults and a minimum of configuration, and that leads to characteristically different products emerging to solve problems that are subsets of the old ones, rather than feature requests piling up forever.
After all, the point of the "application" is to enable a goal to be reached. We can engineer better pens, but that doesn't improve the quality of our writing; but a new tool like a typewriter or word processor does improve it by being more specific to the problem. Following the revolutionary improvement a logarithmic function takes hold; the newest Word only does a little more for most use cases than WordPerfect 5. So the next big leap would not be another word processor, but something that can automate away typing, like an AI-writer, or a cost lowering of other media that requires no typing, like voice and video capture.
For an engineer, the problem can always be solved in new and more efficient ways, as long as new techniques appear. But from a product design standpoint, the optimum is hit when the solution for all cases is automated into defaults and a minimum of configuration, and that leads to characteristically different products emerging to solve problems that are subsets of the old ones, rather than feature requests piling up forever.
I agree with this, but it's not really the point I'm making. I'm saying that the problem you're trying to solve matters. Most often people reinvent the wheel because they aren't trying to solve the problem wheels solve: they're just trying to make money, and if you're reinventing the wheel to make money you're no better than a cheap scammer. Your intentions might be better, because people think capitalism works, and that money means you must be solving a real problem, but that makes little difference to the people whose money you're taking while providing them no value.
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I think you are both right in different ways. For an engineer, the problem can always be solved in new and more efficient ways, as long as new techniques appear. But from a product design standpoint, the optimum is hit when the solution for all cases is automated into defaults and a minimum of configuration, and that leads to characteristically different products emerging to solve problems that are subsets of the old ones, rather than feature requests piling up forever.
After all, the point of the "application" is to enable a goal to be reached. We can engineer better pens, but that doesn't improve the quality of our writing; but a new tool like a typewriter or word processor does improve it by being more specific to the problem. Following the revolutionary improvement a logarithmic function takes hold; the newest Word only does a little more for most use cases than WordPerfect 5. So the next big leap would not be another word processor, but something that can automate away typing, like an AI-writer, or a cost lowering of other media that requires no typing, like voice and video capture.
I agree with this, but it's not really the point I'm making. I'm saying that the problem you're trying to solve matters. Most often people reinvent the wheel because they aren't trying to solve the problem wheels solve: they're just trying to make money, and if you're reinventing the wheel to make money you're no better than a cheap scammer. Your intentions might be better, because people think capitalism works, and that money means you must be solving a real problem, but that makes little difference to the people whose money you're taking while providing them no value.