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As an iOS developer, I feel the same. To quote Steve Jobs: “This is a field where one does not write a principia, which holds up for two hundred years. This is

by gdubs 8y ago

As an iOS developer, I feel the same. To quote Steve Jobs: “This is a field where one does not write a principia, which holds up for two hundred years. This is not a field where one paints a painting that will be looked at for centuries, or builds a church that will be admired and looked at in astonishment for centuries. No. This is a field where one does one’s work and in ten years it’s obsolete, and really will not be usable within ten or twenty years.”

sotojuan 8y ago
While grandparent's comment shows an extreme situation, I agree with the quote. I occasionally see comments here complaining about the ephemerality of the work we do... but I see no other alternative outside of a few domains. I fully accept that the code I will write next week when I get back from vacation won't exist in less than five years.
ken 8y ago
From what I can tell (the video, ironically, was taken down) he said this in 1994, which was right at an inflection point. 10 years from there in either direction was a huge change. He'd just shipped the fastest 68k NeXT workstation they'd ever build. 10 years earlier was the original Macintosh, and 10 years later was the PowerMac G5. Obviously there's not going to be much compatibility across those systems. The curve has flattened out, and the number of architectures has shrunk. I'm typing this on a 10-year-old computer, and it's running modern software just fine. We're not building systems like we used to. We're taking maintainability into account. Performance is good enough that applications rarely publish hardware requirements. Continuing to assume that everyone is going to throw out their computer (and its entire architecture) in 5 years, so we might as well make developers rewrite everything, is just going to lead to a lot of frustrated developers. A little more care inside Apple could save a ton of time outside of it. Apple is great at long-term thinking in some respects, and terrible in others.
joefourier 8y ago
That seems by design more than anything. Outside of iOS, plenty of software doesn't become obsolete in ten or twenty years. Even on the Mac itself, you still have all the classic Unix utilities. Will grep ever become obsolete? People are still using vi/m after 42 years despite all manners of new text editors and IDEs popping up. When it comes to hardware (which is probably what Steve was most concerned about), there's still plenty of electronics that can stand the test of time. I'd say the IBM Model M will be admired and looked at in astonishment for centuries - no modern keyboard has managed to make it obsolete it in the last 35 years. If there's Amigas running infrastructure and DOS boxes still working in the wild, I'd wager there's still some shop somewhere using an Apple II as part of its inventory system.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Even on the Mac itself, you still have all the classic Unix utilities. Will grep ever become obsolete? But you can’t run 68K Mac software or PPC software on a modern Mac. Should Apple still include 68K and PPC emulators in MacOS.
goldfeld 8y ago
Poor Steve, secretly wishes he could have had the constructive legacy of Stallman instead of his destructive consumerism.

by gdubs 8y ago

sotojuan 8y ago

While grandparent's comment shows an extreme situation, I agree with the quote. I occasionally see comments here complaining about the ephemerality of the work we do... but I see no other alternative outside of a few domains. I fully accept that the code I will write next week when I get back from vacation won't exist in less than five years.

ken 8y ago

From what I can tell (the video, ironically, was taken down) he said this in 1994, which was right at an inflection point. 10 years from there in either direction was a huge change. He'd just shipped the fastest 68k NeXT workstation they'd ever build. 10 years earlier was the original Macintosh, and 10 years later was the PowerMac G5. Obviously there's not going to be much compatibility across those systems. The curve has flattened out, and the number of architectures has shrunk. I'm typing this on a 10-year-old computer, and it's running modern software just fine. We're not building systems like we used to. We're taking maintainability into account. Performance is good enough that applications rarely publish hardware requirements. Continuing to assume that everyone is going to throw out their computer (and its entire architecture) in 5 years, so we might as well make developers rewrite everything, is just going to lead to a lot of frustrated developers. A little more care inside Apple could save a ton of time outside of it. Apple is great at long-term thinking in some respects, and terrible in others.

joefourier 8y ago

That seems by design more than anything. Outside of iOS, plenty of software doesn't become obsolete in ten or twenty years. Even on the Mac itself, you still have all the classic Unix utilities. Will grep ever become obsolete? People are still using vi/m after 42 years despite all manners of new text editors and IDEs popping up. When it comes to hardware (which is probably what Steve was most concerned about), there's still plenty of electronics that can stand the test of time. I'd say the IBM Model M will be admired and looked at in astonishment for centuries - no modern keyboard has managed to make it obsolete it in the last 35 years. If there's Amigas running infrastructure and DOS boxes still working in the wild, I'd wager there's still some shop somewhere using an Apple II as part of its inventory system.

scarface74 8y ago
Even on the Mac itself, you still have all the classic Unix utilities. Will grep ever become obsolete? But you can’t run 68K Mac software or PPC software on a modern Mac. Should Apple still include 68K and PPC emulators in MacOS.

goldfeld 8y ago

Poor Steve, secretly wishes he could have had the constructive legacy of Stallman instead of his destructive consumerism.