Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Software is never done, either

Doc points out speechs and products aren't ever "finished" in the traditional sense. This is due to the contracting timeframes available. Back in the days of vellum (made from animal skin, literally "the word made flesh"), you had to VERY carfully consider what you were going to do, with almost no chance for correction. Years to produce a work were common, as well as some things that were to be published only after the death of the author. It's a far different world we now live in, with blogs read daily, which even outpaces the heroic efforts of the victorian era Post Office for correspondence.

We just don't have time to "finish" something. The era of having one acknowledged genious per topic has passed on with the increasing specialization and amateurization of knowledge. There are many who can now be an expert in a field outside of their profession. Blogs and the live web make this possible on a scale previously impossible (or impractical). Because the knowledge is distributed in this manner, it's necessary to spread out the consideration and editing, which is what we're all doing these days.

In the world of programming, this is reflected in the trend towards open source, and the recent emphasis on making everything available online, even the currently untested buggy development version just as it comes back in to the SVN revision system. Things will be less polished, less "professional", but of far better quality overall than they have in the past.

Change is the one constant in the universe, and we're all learning to deal with its new ramifications as things get more interconnected.

Thanks for your time and attention.
--Mike--

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