> but how do you build software if you're not doing it with use cases in mind? That's a fair question in the general case, but that aspect doesn't much apply t

> but how do you build software if you're not doing it with use cases in mind? That's a fair question in the general case, but that aspect doesn't much apply to SQLite's continued evolution. Perhaps it's an uncommon case in that regard. SQLite initially grew out of a single, highly-specific use case which Richard wanted to solve. The solution, however, was highly generic, suitable for solving many, many specific problems. In the mean time, the set of use cases has evolved to, essentially, "just about anything for which you need to save data locally": <https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html> There are literally millions of concrete uses of SQLite in the wild, the majority of which were never conceived when the library first took shape but (and people are still coming up with exotic uses for it). Individual features are sometimes added to help support concrete use cases, but the library is general-purpose enough that concrete use cases don't play a considerable role in its day-to-day development.