

Great Things Take Time - tablet
http://mdubakov.com/post/44532952261/great-things-take-time

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bromagosa
Sorry, but I don't agree. Really great software never ages. Like math: if it's
correct, it never ages. Period. If it does age, it means it was not well
engineered from the very beginning.

    
    
        «10 y.o. technologies are history. 10 y.o. software without major upgrades is dead. While 10 y.o. cars are quite good and decent.»
    

What about the Internet? What about LISP? What about UNIX? I could name a
thousand pieces of software that date back from the 70s and are today as
powerful and "new" as they were back then.

If the web does age, and it does, that should give us some pointers on what's
wrong with it.

~~~
tablet
Internet is improving. UNIX is improving -> Linux, etc. LISP? I'm not sure
whether it still alive.

~~~
bromagosa
You're not sure whether LISP is still alive? O_O

As for the Internet improving... well, during its 40 years of age we reviewed
some protocols, added some others, but I'm not sure that's what the author
implies. The Internet (not the web, the Internet:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite>) of today is quite the
Internet of twenty years ago.

But still, if you prefer to, we can go down to algorithmic level, where things
never age if they're done right.

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DanBC
I can't decide if this post is asking people to move fast and break things, or
iterate gracefully.

I think iteration is very powerful, but we don't seem to have fixed the
problem of when something needs to iterate beyond its old ecosystem.

I haven't said that coherently, but I mean things like WordStar or WordPerfect
moving from DOS into Windows - these two huge word processing systems failed
to make the transition and are now niche products used by a tiny number of
geek enthusiasts. They reached a point when iteration wasn't enough, and they
needed some other thing.

~~~
tablet
You define iterations like something small. In general, iteration can mean
something huge, like full re-work.

I mean, improvements can be gradual or revolutionary. Still it is iterative
process.

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kehrlann
Would Google fall in the "fox" category ? They created significant stuff in
various domains ...

~~~
tablet
Huge companies are interesting. I think Google is closer to fox now. It closed
down quite many products and focused on several (search, android, docs).

Maybe Fox/Hedgehog caregorization is not applicable to such huge companies.
Most likely there are departments and products where foxes are in charge and
vise versa.

