I also appreciate a lot of what Joel has written; without fail, it's always a little insightful and thought provoking. I don't think it's so much that it didn'

I also appreciate a lot of what Joel has written; without fail, it's always a little insightful and thought provoking. I don't think it's so much that it didn't age well... but it started out fairly short-sighted or got lost on the way. The example of generic file support seems a bit of a stretch for example. There's inherently nothing wrong with adding more support, but the contrived example conveniently meant the loss of a feature. Of course backward steps are bad... and why certain 'contracts' are established. I think he went into it wanting to make a different point - delivery in the end matters more than design. This, I've [somewhat begrudgingly] learned, I agree with. He's probably gone on to make a post just like this that changed my views. I don't think he gives credit to these astronauts and what they have to achieve, and the flexibility it demands. These are the dreamers, and sometimes you have to keep them from wandering too far. Other times, you might want to see where it goes. The real world isn't FIFO. You can go with the short term safe plan while you try to find a clever solution to never have $design_problem again, or bolt on the latest feature. It's great that he can imagine his new favorite gizmo, but it has to happen somehow. What's more, the lessons learned along the way tend to be useful anecdotes elsewhere. Like Mr. Savage implied (I won't try to accurately quote), what makes science not screwing around... is writing it down.