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Thinking about this some more, I suppose the take-away for software engineers who don't want to retire young is this: Kill any sense of aesthetics you may have;

Thinking about this some more, I suppose the take-away for software engineers who don't want to retire young is this: Kill any sense of aesthetics you may have; always back the platform or technology that appears to be winning, regardless of what you feel its merits are; never hope for the underdog to win; worse is better; either be a mercenary, or look for ways to do some good within the broken system without trying to fix the parts you can't change. Is that too negative a conclusion?

sanderjd 12y ago
I find screeds from engineers about how broken everything is to be directly at odds with the observable truth of vastly more people with less technical expertise having vastly more access to technology that provides them value. I think the take-away is to get some perspective and stop caring so much about the state of "the system" and just try to create things that are valuable to people.
- digi_owl 12y ago
  Seems to boil down to the age old "perfect is the enemy of good", with said engineers aiming for perfection while seeing (mere) good triumph.
  - sanderjd 12y ago
    Ah, yeah, spot on. That's exactly what it is, and I've always related to that expression.
toyg 12y ago
That's a cynical view of the workplace that you could easily generalise to any institution or marketplace. The good guys never win, it's all about kissing a$$, sell anything that's profitable, milk it until it's dry, etc etc. No market is perfect, and the IT market even less so, dominated as it is by a handful of US companies riding an Asian supply chain fundamentally incapable of (or unwilling to) creative disruption. But it's still more dynamic and open to innovative players than the car market or almost any other market you could mention. The parable of Apple alone should be taken as proof that "it can be done"... Just because some segments seem to be more conservative than others, it doesn't mean the whole sector is doomed; it's just a sign of consolidation in an industry that is barely 50-year old and still very much wild compared to any other sector out there.
gaius 12y ago
At home I use a BBC Micro, Atari ST, Minix, DragonFly (which is written by a former Amiga guy). There is no pleasure to be had in modern mainstream OSs anymore. Love to work or work to live?

sanderjd 12y ago

I find screeds from engineers about how broken everything is to be directly at odds with the observable truth of vastly more people with less technical expertise having vastly more access to technology that provides them value. I think the take-away is to get some perspective and stop caring so much about the state of "the system" and just try to create things that are valuable to people.

digi_owl 12y ago
Seems to boil down to the age old "perfect is the enemy of good", with said engineers aiming for perfection while seeing (mere) good triumph.
- sanderjd 12y ago
  Ah, yeah, spot on. That's exactly what it is, and I've always related to that expression.

toyg 12y ago

That's a cynical view of the workplace that you could easily generalise to any institution or marketplace. The good guys never win, it's all about kissing a$$, sell anything that's profitable, milk it until it's dry, etc etc. No market is perfect, and the IT market even less so, dominated as it is by a handful of US companies riding an Asian supply chain fundamentally incapable of (or unwilling to) creative disruption. But it's still more dynamic and open to innovative players than the car market or almost any other market you could mention. The parable of Apple alone should be taken as proof that "it can be done"... Just because some segments seem to be more conservative than others, it doesn't mean the whole sector is doomed; it's just a sign of consolidation in an industry that is barely 50-year old and still very much wild compared to any other sector out there.

gaius 12y ago

At home I use a BBC Micro, Atari ST, Minix, DragonFly (which is written by a former Amiga guy). There is no pleasure to be had in modern mainstream OSs anymore. Love to work or work to live?