Re: Stores might suck, proprietary protocols are the real killer
Well said that person!
> Sending sodding text messages back and forward.
As an engineer my primary job function is to 'manage complexity' -- I have to take complex concepts and reduce them to implementable and testable components. This is the polar opposite of what large software companies do. Microsoft has been a prime offender since the very beginning, it started life taking relatively simple pieces of code and wrapping them up in such a way that they appeared complex. I don't know if this was deliberate -- programmers on the whole seem to worship complexity -- but its been very profitable because there's no money to be made from a thing that just does a job after the first sale.
The problem with this approach is while it keeps the money flowing it gradually implodes under its own entropy -- more and more noise, less and less information. Due to a historical accident I often find myself having to use software toolsets from the early to mid 90s and they're just as effective at developing systems today as they were 30 years ago. This doesn't mean I'm stuck in the past, far from it, but you get a perspective about just how much of what we use everyday is just noise. Pretty noise maybe, but still noise.
(....and Microsoft still hasn't figured out USB.....)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
