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So computers should’ve stayed expensive and inaccessible to most people. Yeah, that’s how markets grow.

• lproven 3y ago
  That is not only not right, that is not even wrong. It's not even a misinterpretation of what I was saying. It's like taking the first letter of each line, spell checking it until it reads as English somehow, and disagreeing with the result! I am saying we shouldn't have done it the cheap way. We should have done it the best way when it was visible what was the better but more expensive way. Because that is what we must do know, but it's going to be much harder and much more expensive now because we need to replace 30+ years of accumulated useless cruft, while staying interoperable with it throughout.
  • avidphantasm 3y ago
    You’re not wrong, it’s just not how technology tends to develop. We always go with “good enough for now.” Even if some people understand in the moment that there is a better way, there is always a tension between goal and subgoal pursuit. Usually, developing IT systems is the subgoal to the domain goal. Once the IT system is “good enough” to accomplish the domain goal, we move on.
    • lproven 3y ago
      > We always go with “good enough for now.” The whole point of the piece is that not everyone does this and there are plentiful counter-examples, and while they never took over the mainstream, they have survived for decades despite going against the flow. I can say this with authority because I wrote the article, and delivered the original talk upon which it's based.