It speaks to the contradictory nature of software development as it's currently practiced, I think. "What does the software do?" "What do you want it to do?

It speaks to the contradictory nature of software development as it's currently practiced, I think. "What does the software do?" "What do you want it to do? We can add that." "Well, I want to be able to access my old work in a few years, and maybe use it in another program." "I pinky promise that that will happen, and we will make that happen, after we get through all our other customer requests." It's not exactly a new problem that we keep updating software - "bells and whistles" is an old piece of hacker jargon - but there isn't a sense of definite publication now, because there are so many methods of blackboxing in the way, and that's been allowed to take place through the promise of "one more thing" and "surprise and delight" - we only really put up with it through a sense of increasing hype and spectacle. If you have a really firm grasp on what you want the computer to do, you can eliminate just about every application program.