Mall Girls

Young capitalism gets right to it. No fussing around. No bourgeois middle men, no polite hypocrisy — just unvarnished body for stuff.

The company sells software development components and tools. As part of one presentation, the history of software development was recounted;

1. once upon a time, there was host-based computing; one big computer with lots of terminals attached; this was bad;
2. client/server came along when every executive had a PC on his desk, and was better, but still bad;
3. the interwebs came along, ushering in the age of the ASP (application service provider), and this was better, but still bad;
4. browser-based applications came along, and though very much like ASP provided solutions, were somehow different enough to warrant new development (and new tools), and this was better, but still bad;
5. until finally, we’ve reached the pinnacle of computing models, SOA (service-oriented architecture); this is the best ever, 100% good, not bad at all.

Each transition is sold as “what we know now,” as opposed to “what we knew back when we were selling you that old stuff that we’re now saying isn’t good enough anymore.” I understand churn like this is good for business (at least the business of selling software development tools). I wonder, though, if the people pushing this line believe it?

Could the admit, if they don’t believe it, that they don’t? That they realize they’re selling ideas pushed by marketing as technological breakthroughs? ‘Course not. That would be 100% bad for sales, not good at all.

If they do believe what they’re selling, what does this say about their judgment, their knowledge of history and the business they’re in? They don’t look stupid. I’m sure they’re not stupid.

Who’s buying? Who’s selling?

Programmers are procrastinators. Get in, get some coffee, check the mailbox, read the RSS feeds, read the news, check out latest articles on techie websites, browse through political discussions on the designated sections of the programming forums. Rinse and repeat to make sure nothing is missed. Go to lunch. Come back, stare at the IDE for a few minutes. Check the mailbox. Get some coffee. Before you know it, the day is over.

Last month, in a meeting to discuss the design of a failing project, managers who had previously touted SOA as good for everything said things like, “SOA is great, but we don’t need all the power; our transactions are so simple, we don’t need SOA.”

So maybe this is the rap that will hang from the SOA dog’s neck. It’s too powerful. Beautiful — can’t blame anybody for using technology that turned out to be too powerful.

Why does working in a place where managers never make mistakes frustrate me so?