7 ms·

That is most likely part of it. Likewise, the current structure of most companies simply cannot function in the face of something being 'done'. Someone has to

That is most likely part of it. Likewise, the current structure of most companies simply cannot function in the face of something being 'done'. Someone has to keep the developers busy for the 40 hours a week they must be in their chairs to get paid. Even if that weren't an issue, you will always have someone who wants a promotion. And they will need to have something to show off to get it. So they will come up with a 'brave new direction' and use sheer force of will to make it happen. I remember when I first realized that software companies had a fundamental problem with how they handled finished products. BulletProof FTP. It was a magnificent FTP client decades ago. I used it on my dialup connection to practice data hoarding. I paid for it because it was a trustworthy companion in my adventures through the net. But, that turned out to be its ownfall. It was feature-complete and it was excellent (although they never did fix the problem with quick reconnects resulting in a pre-existing binary transfer socket getting picked up for use as the command connection, spamming the thing with random binary data and confusing the hell out of itself and the user...). But clearly, that was unacceptable. They continued to shoehorn in irrelevant crap that nobody wanted. Eventually it got so bad that it wasn't even very good at being an FTP client any more. I've since seen that repeated innumerable times since. A product is completed, but people still have to be kept busy with fake work that destroys everything they built. The fact we still use the structures and ideas designed for factories and assembly lines for modern companies is ludicrous.

deleted 11y ago
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panic 11y ago
As written by the Conway of "Conway's law" in 1968: As long as the manager's prestige and power are tied to the size of his budget, he will be motivated to expand his organization. This is an inappropriate motive in the management of a system design activity. Once the organization exists, of course, it will be used. Probably the greatest single common factor behind many poorly designed systems now in existence has been the availability of a design organization in need of work.
- lifeisstillgood 11y ago
  Great quote - any online references? Or even a new book I need :/)
  - panic 11y ago
    Here's where I got it: http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html
- WalterBright 11y ago
  Didn't C. Northcote Parkinson precede that by decades?
pbowyer 11y ago
> But clearly, that was unacceptable. They continued to shoehorn in irrelevant crap that nobody wanted. It will be interesting to see if the SaaS subscription/rental model changes this. Or if they feel as beholden to adding features each release as people trying to sell software releases to get upgrade income.
- sangnoir 11y ago
  >It will be interesting to see if the SaaS subscription/rental model changes this. I think the rental model will slow this down, but not get rid of it entirely: not as long as people still want to write blogs about the "new version of our product". I think JetBrains will make a good case study: their products are feature complete and they seemed to struggle to find new features to add lately (plus they have switched to rental model). What we really need is something similar to API versioning: when GMail has a new version, bump up the version to 24, but keep version 23 accessible to those who prefer it.
  - mschuster91 11y ago
    > I think JetBrains will make a good case study: their products are feature complete and they seemed to struggle to find new features to add lately (plus they have switched to rental model). What Jetbrains MUST do: improve the performance! Replacing my MBPs spinning rust disk with a SSD helped, but it's still eating up CPU when running on battery with indexing... it's a text editor for fucks sake.
    - spdionis 11y ago
      It is NOT a text editor and I think it's eating that cpu for a good reason.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        It totally is a glorified text editor + some support tools and I'm pretty sure the reason it's eating that CPU is because of piles of unoptimized cruft. Like every other big project in contemporary "it's nil until you ship it" culture.
yardie 11y ago
This is also the trajectory of Winamp. An application that was complete by v.2. But you couldn't just have an MP3 player. No, it needed to play videos and radio stations, plugins, skins, etc. By v.5 I barely recognized it and all the new Windows it opened when loaded. See also iTunes, the Mac version, iTunes for Windows has always been shit.
- iSnow 11y ago
  I really liked iTunes until version 9. After that, it is barely usable. As a seasoned Mac user, I have a hard time finding functions.
paulojreis 11y ago
> Someone has to keep the developers busy for the 40 hours a week they must be in their chairs to get paid. I thought Hacker News and Reddit handled that. :
clapinton 11y ago
That's very true. Sometimes I wonder what the team behind WhatsApp does all day. They released Web and voice calling, but nothing since, and there's nothing to keep us expecting new things. No new features are added. Yes, they have to squash bugs and that is endless. Maybe work on a better infrastructure and make it more stable, but we'll never know about. Other than that, it's solid already and doesn't need anything else. But then again, there's a paradox: if they do nothing and someone shows up that, for some reason, steals their customers, they can get in trouble, like Orkut fell and was "replaced" by Facebook. If they do something that breaks the experience, they can loose users to another player (recently in Brazil, WhatsApp was banned for 48 hours and lots of users signed up for Telegram. It wasn't WhatsApp's fault, yes, but it's just one more showing of how easily users migrate when they're not pleased). So what do you do? You have to be careful with where you take your service. But standing still is just waiting for someone to come and stab you.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

panic 11y ago

As written by the Conway of "Conway's law" in 1968: As long as the manager's prestige and power are tied to the size of his budget, he will be motivated to expand his organization. This is an inappropriate motive in the management of a system design activity. Once the organization exists, of course, it will be used. Probably the greatest single common factor behind many poorly designed systems now in existence has been the availability of a design organization in need of work.

lifeisstillgood 11y ago
Great quote - any online references? Or even a new book I need :/)
- panic 11y ago
  Here's where I got it: http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html
WalterBright 11y ago
Didn't C. Northcote Parkinson precede that by decades?

pbowyer 11y ago

> But clearly, that was unacceptable. They continued to shoehorn in irrelevant crap that nobody wanted. It will be interesting to see if the SaaS subscription/rental model changes this. Or if they feel as beholden to adding features each release as people trying to sell software releases to get upgrade income.

sangnoir 11y ago
>It will be interesting to see if the SaaS subscription/rental model changes this. I think the rental model will slow this down, but not get rid of it entirely: not as long as people still want to write blogs about the "new version of our product". I think JetBrains will make a good case study: their products are feature complete and they seemed to struggle to find new features to add lately (plus they have switched to rental model). What we really need is something similar to API versioning: when GMail has a new version, bump up the version to 24, but keep version 23 accessible to those who prefer it.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  > I think JetBrains will make a good case study: their products are feature complete and they seemed to struggle to find new features to add lately (plus they have switched to rental model). What Jetbrains MUST do: improve the performance! Replacing my MBPs spinning rust disk with a SSD helped, but it's still eating up CPU when running on battery with indexing... it's a text editor for fucks sake.
  - spdionis 11y ago
    It is NOT a text editor and I think it's eating that cpu for a good reason.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      It totally is a glorified text editor + some support tools and I'm pretty sure the reason it's eating that CPU is because of piles of unoptimized cruft. Like every other big project in contemporary "it's nil until you ship it" culture.

yardie 11y ago

This is also the trajectory of Winamp. An application that was complete by v.2. But you couldn't just have an MP3 player. No, it needed to play videos and radio stations, plugins, skins, etc. By v.5 I barely recognized it and all the new Windows it opened when loaded. See also iTunes, the Mac version, iTunes for Windows has always been shit.

iSnow 11y ago
I really liked iTunes until version 9. After that, it is barely usable. As a seasoned Mac user, I have a hard time finding functions.

paulojreis 11y ago

> Someone has to keep the developers busy for the 40 hours a week they must be in their chairs to get paid. I thought Hacker News and Reddit handled that. :

clapinton 11y ago

That's very true. Sometimes I wonder what the team behind WhatsApp does all day. They released Web and voice calling, but nothing since, and there's nothing to keep us expecting new things. No new features are added. Yes, they have to squash bugs and that is endless. Maybe work on a better infrastructure and make it more stable, but we'll never know about. Other than that, it's solid already and doesn't need anything else. But then again, there's a paradox: if they do nothing and someone shows up that, for some reason, steals their customers, they can get in trouble, like Orkut fell and was "replaced" by Facebook. If they do something that breaks the experience, they can loose users to another player (recently in Brazil, WhatsApp was banned for 48 hours and lots of users signed up for Telegram. It wasn't WhatsApp's fault, yes, but it's just one more showing of how easily users migrate when they're not pleased). So what do you do? You have to be careful with where you take your service. But standing still is just waiting for someone to come and stab you.