
The Curse of Xanadu - b-man
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive//3.06/xanadu_pr.html
======
mblakele
I came out of this article with a new respect for John Walker of Autodesk.
Here's his take on the collision of architecture astronauts and waterfall
project planning:

John Walker, Xanadu's most powerful protector, later wrote that during the
Autodesk years, the Xanadu team had "hyper-warped into the techno-hubris
zone." Walker marveled at the programmers' apparent belief that they could
create "in its entirety, a system that can store all the information in every
form, present and future, for quadrillions of individuals over billions of
years." Rather than push their product into the marketplace quickly, where it
could compete, adapt, or die, the Xanadu programmers intended to produce their
revolution ab initio.

"When this process fails," wrote Walker in his collection of documents from
and about Autodesk, "and it always does, that doesn't seem to weaken the
belief in a design process which, in reality, is as bogus as astrology. It's
always a bad manager, problems with tools, etc. - precisely the unpredictable
factors which make a priori design impossible in the first place."

<http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_108.html> continues with:

Absolutely the only way I know to succeed with an innovative product is to
throw something together quickly, push it out the door, persuade some lunatic
early-adopters to start using it, and then rapidly evolve it on a quick
turnaround cycle based on market acceptance and driven by a wish list from
actual users.

~~~
omouse
The tools that we shape, will in turn shape us. The trouble is that if you
release a project early, the people who use it or participate in it could
become used to its current state and fight against any change.

You can see this with Microsoft products. Microsoft has to have its updated
products compete with its previous products.

This is also true of Project Xanadu. If we consider the Web as an early form
of Xanadu, we can see that it was released prematurely. There are lots of
design flaws and over the years band-aides have been applied to them. There
are still many people who fight against these band-aides (I'm looking at you
IE6 users and corps who force the use of that browser). We're stuck using
hacks for what should be easy. People are now used to do things the hard way
and using hacks and cannot easily envision a system that doesn't suck.

~~~
davidmathers
Worse is Better is about LISP vs. C, but it fits Xanadu vs. WWW.

worse-is-better:

 _It is important to remember that the initial virus has to be basically good.
If so, the viral spread is assured as long as it is portable. Once the virus
has spread, there will be pressure to improve it, possibly by increasing its
functionality closer to 90%, but users have already been conditioned to accept
worse than the right thing. Therefore, the worse-is-better software first will
gain acceptance, second will condition its users to expect less, and third
will be improved to a point that is almost the right thing._

the-right-thing:

 _First, the right thing needs to be designed. Then its implementation needs
to be designed. Finally it is implemented. Because it is the right thing, it
has nearly 100% of desired functionality, and implementation simplicity was
never a concern so it takes a long time to implement. It is large and complex.
It requires complex tools to use properly. The last 20% takes 80% of the
effort, and so the right thing takes a long time to get out, and it only runs
satisfactorily on the most sophisticated hardware._

The Web was only half-baked, but it wasn't released prematurely.

~~~
billswift
Anything actually working was released when only half-baked; perfectionists
either never release anything or they release it so late that it never gains
any traction against its already-in-use competitors. The first release of
anything that is going to succeed is effectively going to be a prototype,
whether the inventors intended it to be or not.

------
etherael
We have held to ideals created long ago, in different times and places, the
very best ideals we could find. We have carried these banners unstained to
this new place, we now plant them and hope to see them floating in the wind.
But it is dark and quiet and lonely here, and not yet dawn.

I'll drink to that.

------
davidmathers
I worked with Roger Gregory for a few weeks in 1999, 4 years after this
article was written. He still hadn't recovered from Xanadu. I got the
impression that he never really would.

~~~
davidw
That must have been at Linuxcare... I was there too and have a few memories of
him.

~~~
davidmathers
Yes. My project there was to build the linuxcare.com website in the 3 weeks
between the day they got funded and the first LinuxWorld Expo. Roger worked on
the website with me.

I remember being introduced to you in the hallway one day, but I don't think I
saw you again after that.

~~~
davidw
Yeah, I started sometime after the LinuxWorld Expo. Roger later got let go by
the guy they brought in to be a 'CTO' sort of guy, Sal Meola (who was in turn
let go, and subsequently replaced by the infamous Doug Nassaur:
[http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4883&cid=11425...](http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4883&cid=1142578)
)

~~~
davidmathers
Haha, I couldn't remember why I didn't take a job there. Thanks for reminding
me. After I met Sal Meola I said to David Sifry: "wtf?" David assured me that
he was someone who "got things done", but I really couldn't bear the thought
of working with him.

~~~
davidw
He wasn't great, but Doug... _shudder_. If Sal was perhaps not the right guy
for the job, Doug inspired outright loathing in people.

------
zandorg
I've worked with Ted and it's a myth that he makes vapour ware. For instance,
Gzz is a fully-working program.

Also, I have a 1989 article from Language Technology (Louis Rossetto's first
magazine before Wired), and it's a breezy interview with Ted about Zigzag, and
other issues, with no malice. I have no idea why Louis turned on Ted later in
Wired (this very article). I might post the LT article.

------
lawfulfalafel
This article is great and I hope to see many more like it on hacker news. I
know most people hate the goldfish tendency of most social networks to go
through "forgotten" articles, but stuff like this needs to be brought up. Long
and interesting articles make this site so much more livable :P.

------
kyochan
Why do projects name Xanadu always seems to mean some boondoggle?

Xanadu is a name of a mall in Jersey that was supposed to open in 2007 but got
pushed back next summer. Even then, it might not even survive the recession.

I guess the lesson is never call your projects Xanadu or Duke Nukem Forever.

~~~
noaharc
Well Xanadu was a thing before the mall in Jersey.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanadu>

"It became fabled as a metaphor for opulence, most famously in the English
Romantic Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan."

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CaptSolo
A well-written piece, but I would not call it news.

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jsares
Down vote me for being glib but this article is just too long.

