3 ms·

My experience is that Gates' Law is very real and it is the enemy of software development, at least on corporate teams. Software development is a culture of tr

My experience is that Gates' Law is very real and it is the enemy of software development, at least on corporate teams. Software development is a culture of tribes defined by sets of related languages, processes, frameworks, and so forth. If you deviate from the tribe's set of norms you just alienate yourself. It does not matter if your deviation results in massive cost reductions, improvements to efficiency, superior productivity, and so forth. There are many reasons for this, in my experience, that I will not go into.

senand 3y ago
I can't follow. Do you mean the culture of tribes is related to the overestimation of the impact of technology in the short-term, which Gates' Law mentions?
- austin-cheney 3y ago
  I will give you a historical example. In 1346 the English absolutely annihilated the French at the Battle of Crecy. The English had the longbow. The longbow had greater power, much greater range, a greater than 3x fire rate, and less failure rate due to mechanical complexity compared to the French crossbow. In 1415 the English destroyed a significant portion of the entire French army with a vastly inferior force. Again, it came down primarily to the longbow and also cultural differences with regards to concepts of chivalry. If the French knew the English had superior war technology nearly a 100 years before why didn't the French adopt the longbow? They had more than sufficient time and resources. It comes down to cultural differences. The French had a large standing army of professional soldiers. The English army was mostly composed of reservists who trained as a part time job. It takes years to become passably competent at the longbow which means you need a lot of people training on that all the time. So much went into the training that some of the English became deformed by having one arm substantially larger and more muscular than the other. The French never modified their culture to account for the difference in technology. Software is just like that. Most teams would rather fail than deviate from their currently familiar set of conventions and processes. Some of that comes down to an inability to measure things, limits on perceptions and diversity of approaches, some of it is also a fear of retraining, and various other factors. Most people who write software like to think of themselves as some sort of engineer, but its still mostly a cottage industry devoid of the professionalism crystalized in most other industries.
crq-yml 3y ago
It's notable that the turnover of listings on major stock indexes has generally increased over time. Everyone knows that companies have lifecycles, and part of the old 20th century career path was that the lifecycle was sufficiently large that you could stay at a big employer forever. But nowadays, that's quite uncertain. In effect, you can assume that software you write for a company's business process is "already on life support", moments after it enters production. Whatever angle they had to get sales, it is not sustaining, and the next market cycle will cause a crisis in which they are acquired by an unrelated business. The software tribes tend to have a kind of family tree as they jump ship from one business to the next; e.g. you can do an analysis of game development practices by looking at Mobygames credit lists and old articles in GDMag, and observing who goes where, and when a certain pioneering technique starts to diffuse from one team out into the industry.

senand 3y ago

I can't follow. Do you mean the culture of tribes is related to the overestimation of the impact of technology in the short-term, which Gates' Law mentions?

austin-cheney 3y ago
I will give you a historical example. In 1346 the English absolutely annihilated the French at the Battle of Crecy. The English had the longbow. The longbow had greater power, much greater range, a greater than 3x fire rate, and less failure rate due to mechanical complexity compared to the French crossbow. In 1415 the English destroyed a significant portion of the entire French army with a vastly inferior force. Again, it came down primarily to the longbow and also cultural differences with regards to concepts of chivalry. If the French knew the English had superior war technology nearly a 100 years before why didn't the French adopt the longbow? They had more than sufficient time and resources. It comes down to cultural differences. The French had a large standing army of professional soldiers. The English army was mostly composed of reservists who trained as a part time job. It takes years to become passably competent at the longbow which means you need a lot of people training on that all the time. So much went into the training that some of the English became deformed by having one arm substantially larger and more muscular than the other. The French never modified their culture to account for the difference in technology. Software is just like that. Most teams would rather fail than deviate from their currently familiar set of conventions and processes. Some of that comes down to an inability to measure things, limits on perceptions and diversity of approaches, some of it is also a fear of retraining, and various other factors. Most people who write software like to think of themselves as some sort of engineer, but its still mostly a cottage industry devoid of the professionalism crystalized in most other industries.

crq-yml 3y ago

It's notable that the turnover of listings on major stock indexes has generally increased over time. Everyone knows that companies have lifecycles, and part of the old 20th century career path was that the lifecycle was sufficiently large that you could stay at a big employer forever. But nowadays, that's quite uncertain. In effect, you can assume that software you write for a company's business process is "already on life support", moments after it enters production. Whatever angle they had to get sales, it is not sustaining, and the next market cycle will cause a crisis in which they are acquired by an unrelated business. The software tribes tend to have a kind of family tree as they jump ship from one business to the next; e.g. you can do an analysis of game development practices by looking at Mobygames credit lists and old articles in GDMag, and observing who goes where, and when a certain pioneering technique starts to diffuse from one team out into the industry.