January 03, 2006

It's Funny How Perspective Can Completely Change The Way You See, Think, and Feel

To help bring light to the fact that I recently came to realize I was being EXTYREMELY hypocritical in my last post without realizing it, I am reprinting my recent comments left on Bill's original post.

Kurt followed-up both Bill's original comments as well as Sylvains follow-up comments with what became the trigger to my realization of my hypocrisy. Please see the reprint of my attempt at repentance ;) below:

Originally posted as follow-up to Bill de hÓra's post entitled "Learn more stuff" from January 2nd, 2006:

After reading Kurt's post just now I've realized that in fact I have the same complaints, and in particular blame these complexities in many ways on the fact that the software companies are not just in the business of creating software, but also to make money. Obviously this is not a sudden and overwhelming revelation nor is it a suggestion thats theres a whole lot we can do about it and/or complain because of it. Theres not an industry nor company on this planet who is not concerned with both making a profit and, if possible, a significant profit.

Fast forwarding through a lot of useless mumbo-jumbo we are all already aware of, the downside to the development world is that the drive to both make and increase profit means a push to not only create better software that is alluring to the consumer base, but to increase that consumer base if at all possible. To increase the consumer base of the devtool/platform market is easy... build tools and platforms that will attract more interest, increasing the base of "developers" willing to purchase more products.

As Kurt has already pointed out, this is cyclical downward spiral that brings the words of Trent Reznor's March of the Pigs into a whole new light:

---

maybe afraid of it let's discredit it let's pick away at it
I want to watch it come down
now doesn't that make you feel better?
the pigs have won tonight
now they can all sleep soundly
and everything is all right

Please don't take the above to mean a directed comment at MS in regards to the "Pigs". Obviously this is an industry wide problem, and I doubt much there's a whole lot that can be done about it. While there are a handful of companies out there that are content with developing products that attract only the select (elite?) few, and they're fine with serving the needs of these folks without taking it to the bloatware extremes. Unfortunately, theres not enough of those companies/people to change the rest of the industry's tendency to be "Pigs" even if they don't realize that this is actually what they are/what they are doing.

The funny thing about this... [NOTE: The portion of this paragraph after "I" was clipped off in my original comment as I improperly used a < as a way to 'point' at the URL I placed inline. The link is now wrapped in an anchor tag around the words 'I wrote' that follow] I wrote not more than two or three days about this exact problem, but from a different perspective. I hadn't made the connection until now. But now that I have I realize even more so than before.

Bill (and Sylvain, and Kurt), you're absolutely right.

But is there a way to fix this? How do you fix a problem thats only seen as a the problem it is by a small minority of the developer population.

Come to think of it... it seems there's another group of folks that have a similar tendency to see the problems and fallacies that come when the business men and women realize there's a market and as such, profit to be had:

Artist's

Yet again, Paul Graham is proven correct.

Thanks for opening my eyes Bill (and Sylvain, then Kurt ;)