You know how Fred Brooks said to "build one to throw away"? You just can't do that with Enterprise software because the businesses that use it need it to keep living.
You know all those little things you learn as you go along, and you begin to really understand the problem, and how to solve it properly? You can't do that with Enterprise software either, because everything else relies on what you choose already; and even worse, changes in the environment are coming in all the time that you must adapt to first. That's hard enough, even with a stable (if flawed) foundation to work from.
You can iteratively adapt it, but you can't iteratively improve it.
It's a problem of legacy, of network effects, of debugged/tested/working code and of something relied on so strongly that you can't afford to mess with it.
Incidentally, I often get unknown or expired link when I submit comments, which is presumably HackerNews' way of saying that I took too long considering and drafting my comment. This seems to discourage thoughtful replies.
It seems to me that intellectually stimulating discussion would be served better by a longer timeout.
(fortunately, the back-button and cut-and-paste circumvents this problem, but it gave me a start the first time).
Comments
What a cock and bull story (sic.)
You know how Fred Brooks said to "build one to throw away"? You just can't do that with Enterprise software because the businesses that use it need it to keep living.
You know all those little things you learn as you go along, and you begin to really understand the problem, and how to solve it properly? You can't do that with Enterprise software either, because everything else relies on what you choose already; and even worse, changes in the environment are coming in all the time that you must adapt to first. That's hard enough, even with a stable (if flawed) foundation to work from.
You can iteratively adapt it, but you can't iteratively improve it.
It's a problem of legacy, of network effects, of debugged/tested/working code and of something relied on so strongly that you can't afford to mess with it.
Joel says you can't improve these things. You can - but it's a research problem. "Things You Should Never Do, Part I" (rewrite code from scratch) http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
Incidentally, I often get unknown or expired link when I submit comments, which is presumably HackerNews' way of saying that I took too long considering and drafting my comment. This seems to discourage thoughtful replies.
It seems to me that intellectually stimulating discussion would be served better by a longer timeout.
(fortunately, the back-button and cut-and-paste circumvents this problem, but it gave me a start the first time).