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Think of software like car making. Cars once ran off steam, very simple and mechanical... Now cars run on combustion or electronics, but relatively none run off

Think of software like car making. Cars once ran off steam, very simple and mechanical... Now cars run on combustion or electronics, but relatively none run off steam now, because the industry forgot to make steam engines evolve... The same goes for development... It's not impossible to rethink things in a more simple manner, it's just that we've stopped listening to the right size shoe for each foot that needs one because of shiny marketing. Technology doesn't become obsolete these days, it just becomes out-marketed and under-supported.

galaxyLogic 4y ago
That is a good point. In software development momentum is everything. Why because you got to have many people working on it to allow it to become better. And "better" is a holistic thing: You got to be COMPATIBLE with other popular development tools, to be "better".
CRConrad 4y ago
Your analogy certainly works, but probably not quite in the way you intended: 1) Cars are transitioning to electric propulsion, not electronic. Electronics have long been present in engine management of internal combustion engines too. 2) This is actually not new, but just a resurgence of something very old -- at the turn of the century (19th/20th, not 20th/21st), electric propulsion was quite common[1], the land speed record was held by an electric car[2], and the first "series-hybrid" system[3] was introduced[4]. 3) Steam engines -- discounting steam turbines -- are also just combustion-driven piston engines; the only difference is that the combustion is external, not internal. OK, so it's not the combustion gases themselves that are expanding within the chamber, but steam heated (created) by them. But that's a minor detail, IMO.[5] What does this mean for software engineering (or "engineering", in scare quotes)? Not sure... Probably something like: A) Old tech doesn't go away. It just falls out of use and gets forgotten. B) "New tech" often isn't. It's just old tech being uncovered or independently rediscovered. C) What we think is a huge innovation is often just a return to older tech. ("The Cloud" ~= the mainframe?) A + B + C = "COBOL, here we come!"? :-) Idunno. . EDIT -- oops, footnotes: ___ [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Early_developments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Early_development... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jamais_Contente https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jamais_Contente [3]: Where an internal combustion engine drives a generator that drives the wheels via electric motors and charges the main battery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vehicle_drivetrain#Series_hybrid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vehicle_drivetrain#Seri... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner%E2%80%93Porsche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner%E2%80%93Porsche [5]: In fact, AFAICS a four-stroke (preferably diesel?) internal combustion engine could fairly easily be converted into another kind of hybrid, an "external combustion - internal evaporisation" engine. I've been thinking about whether the (alleged?) greater efficiency of continuous combustion in comparison to intermittent would make such a conversion worthwhile. (Just one more of the many half-baked inventions bopping around in my head. :-)

galaxyLogic 4y ago

That is a good point. In software development momentum is everything. Why because you got to have many people working on it to allow it to become better. And "better" is a holistic thing: You got to be COMPATIBLE with other popular development tools, to be "better".

CRConrad 4y ago

Your analogy certainly works, but probably not quite in the way you intended: 1) Cars are transitioning to electric propulsion, not electronic. Electronics have long been present in engine management of internal combustion engines too. 2) This is actually not new, but just a resurgence of something very old -- at the turn of the century (19th/20th, not 20th/21st), electric propulsion was quite common[1], the land speed record was held by an electric car[2], and the first "series-hybrid" system[3] was introduced[4]. 3) Steam engines -- discounting steam turbines -- are also just combustion-driven piston engines; the only difference is that the combustion is external, not internal. OK, so it's not the combustion gases themselves that are expanding within the chamber, but steam heated (created) by them. But that's a minor detail, IMO.[5] What does this mean for software engineering (or "engineering", in scare quotes)? Not sure... Probably something like: A) Old tech doesn't go away. It just falls out of use and gets forgotten. B) "New tech" often isn't. It's just old tech being uncovered or independently rediscovered. C) What we think is a huge innovation is often just a return to older tech. ("The Cloud" ~= the mainframe?) A + B + C = "COBOL, here we come!"? :-) Idunno. . EDIT -- oops, footnotes: ___ [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Early_developments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Early_development... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jamais_Contente https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jamais_Contente [3]: Where an internal combustion engine drives a generator that drives the wheels via electric motors and charges the main battery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vehicle_drivetrain#Series_hybrid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vehicle_drivetrain#Seri... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner%E2%80%93Porsche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner%E2%80%93Porsche [5]: In fact, AFAICS a four-stroke (preferably diesel?) internal combustion engine could fairly easily be converted into another kind of hybrid, an "external combustion - internal evaporisation" engine. I've been thinking about whether the (alleged?) greater efficiency of continuous combustion in comparison to intermittent would make such a conversion worthwhile. (Just one more of the many half-baked inventions bopping around in my head. :-)