{"id":98,"date":"2004-03-21T15:00:24","date_gmt":"2004-03-21T07:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foxpro.ntsl119.com\/scr\/?p=98"},"modified":"2007-11-14T14:14:30","modified_gmt":"2007-11-14T06:14:30","slug":"article-why-software-still-stinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foxpro.ntsl119.com\/scr\/archives\/98","title":{"rendered":"article . why software still stinks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This article, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/tech\/col\/rose\/2004\/03\/19\/programmers_at_work\/\" target=\"_blank\">Why software still stinks<\/a>, written by Scott Rosenberg points out a number of interesting things. Here are some insights from that article uttered by some of the pioneers of the software industry.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;I looked at the programmer as an individual on a quest to create something new that would change the world.&#8221; (Susan Lammers)<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>&#8220;Software inefficiency can always outpace Moore&#8217;s Law. Moore&#8217;s Law isn&#8217;t a match for our bad coding.&#8221; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.advanced.org\/jaron\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jaron Lanier<\/a> &#8211; pioneer of virtual reality)<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>&#8220;Software as we know it is the bottleneck on the digital horn of plenty.&#8221; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.edge.org\/digerati\/simonyi\/simonyi_p1.html\" target=\"_blank\">Charles Simonyi<\/a>, from Xerox PARC and Microsoft code guru behind Microsoft&#8217;s Office suite)<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>&#8220;Most successful programmers are at heart can-do engineers who are optimistic that every problem has a solution.&#8221;<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>&#8220;There are two meanings to software design. One is, designing the artifact we&#8217;re trying to implement. The other is the sheer software engineering to make that artifact come into being. I believe these are two separate roles &#8212; the subject matter expert and the software engineer.&#8221; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.edge.org\/digerati\/simonyi\/simonyi_p1.html\" target=\"_blank\">Charles Simonyi<\/a>)<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>&#8220;A lot of stuff in the Mac and Windows world was supposed to be temporary and got wedged into place,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Making programming fundamentally better might be the single most important challenge we face &#8212; and the most difficult one.&#8221; Today&#8217;s software world is simply too &#8220;brittle&#8221; &#8212; one tiny error and everything grinds to a halt: &#8220;We&#8217;re constantly teetering on the edge of catastrophe.&#8221; Nature and biological systems are much more flexible, adaptable and forgiving, and we should look to them for new answers. &#8220;The path forward is being biomimetic.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nAnd I wasn&#8217;t able to stop myself from laughing when i read these two lines:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;There&#8217;s this wonderful outpouring of creativity in the open-source world. So what do they make &#8212; another version of Unix?&#8221; (Jaron Lanier) <\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>&#8220;And what do they put on top of it? Another Windows!&#8221; (Jef Raskin) <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nAnd one more from young Bill Gates:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;The best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems.&#8221; (Bill Gates)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nThat article pointed out a lot of good links too. To name a few: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.folklore.org\/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&#038;story=The_Father_of_The_Macintosh.txt\" target=\"_blank\">The Father of Macintosh<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/presspass\/features\/2000\/oct00\/10-10insideout.asp\" target=\"_blank\">The computer is an amplifier for your brain<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.salon.com\/21st\/feature\/1998\/06\/cov_18feature.html\" target=\"_blank\">Are microchips too fast for mere mortals?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article, Why software still stinks, written by Scott Rosenberg points out a number of interesting things. Here are some insights from that article uttered by some of the pioneers of the software industry. &#8220;I looked at the programmer as an individual on a quest to create something new that would change the world.&#8221; (Susan [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-randomlinks","category-softdev-non-vfp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxpro.ntsl119.com\/scr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxpro.ntsl119.com\/scr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxpro.ntsl119.com\/scr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxpro.ntsl119.com\/scr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxpro.ntsl119.com\/scr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foxpro.ntsl119.com\/scr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxpro.ntsl119.com\/scr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxpro.ntsl119.com\/scr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxpro.ntsl119.com\/scr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}