There is a way out of the mess
I once came across somebody's Windows app suite that he ingeniously managed to hack into a single file. To install into ANY Windows computer, you just copied the file into your disk and then executed the file with a run command and you were in business. END OF STORY!
On another occasion, I developed an app for the first failed attempt at a pen-based tablet.
(Year's ago the long defunct Momenta was an interesting try with an OO Windows-replacement-want-to-be OS that died for several reasons including the stupidly of using a multi-battery, serially connected pack that tried to ignore the conventional laptop mandate that batteries must be independently topped when charging. Its graphic backbone used a beautiful homogeneous matrix transform system for graphics)
The chief engineer of the development saw the transformable, drag and drop, live widgets I developed for the app, took a peak at my code, and said, "I bet that can will work on every app on the system!"
We walked over to a computer and tried it, and low and behold it worked!
The point is, if one is systematic in a certain way, vast quantities of complexity disappear and cease to exist, and existential functionality increases exponentially. You can avoid the endless treadmill of the busy work of infinite individual impossible-to-maintain compatibility issues and replace it with positive unintended consequences. The fact is, most software maintenance today is unnecessary busywork and is a direct consequence of not doing things systematically in the right way in the first place.
Do such systematic, zero-maintenance systems exist in the Real World? Because of our universal stupidity, not very often. But by chance, have you ever heard of the Decimal System?
What is it like? Zero maintenance, globally accepted, maximum simple while not being simplistic, universally useful, free, not expected to require replacement for thousands of years.
Are we systematic enough in our efforts to make superior real progress? Absolutely NOT! The test for a sufficient level of being systematic is simply whether the prevalent unintended consequences of our efforts are generally good or bad. END OF STORY.
What the pervasive aggressive Big Boys of the industry completely miss is that if they were to give up their greed of primarily trying to move money many others piles to their own pile and instead relentlessly pursued a high level of the right kind of systematic effort, they would become authentically richer than they could ever be pursuing their current money-grubbing fashion.
Why? Because the World would monotonically become a much better place and there is a permutive astronomical amount of possible potential in that direction.
It is true that efforts would become more challenging and may very well multiply the amount of effort to complete a project, but the consequences of any such successful efforts would measurably and permanently change the World for the better. The total effect over the long haul would be a fraction of what it currently is to achieve any particular amount of positive outcome over the long term.
What we are missing isn't just making the World twice as good, we are missing the chance to make the World 100s of times better.
The potential is there. If one is systematic in a particularly good way that has some merit. But being systematic in many ways is nonlinear and exponentially growing benefit in the long term.
Take the example of the linear effort of an egg slicer. If you slice and dice an egg with linear effort cuts along the three dimensions, you can cut the egg into a thousand tiny dice cubes. The outcome was N cubed. That is an exponential result of the linear effort.
Likewise, if you make many of the independent aspects of your project systematic in the right way, then you reduce complexity in every dimension and the positive results exponentially grow much faster than the required linear effort.
To consider how much better the outcome can be, consider that the number of possible outcomes is incredibly huge and the best of the lot is going to be good indeed!
For example, solving within the very limited problem space of Rubik's cube actually produces a large problem space. If you stacked all the unique permutations of cubes on top of each other, the resulting stack of cubes would be about 300 light-years long. But such a space can be navigated by a World class cuber, who can find the unique solution in about 7 seconds flat by being systematic in the right way.
So the number of possible solutions to a real-world problem is much much larger than this. So doesn't that mean the best solution is likely to be much better than what we usually do?
Also, consider the dynamic of being systematic along multiple dimensions. Then we can step back and wait for the good consequences that we can't even imagine because their are so many if the that are actually possible.
So we could make things a lot better if we just understand that it is possible. We can all start doing something about this by making it part of the public dialogue and educating everyone about it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
