Re^4: Death and Return of TIMTOWTDI

Sorry... I misanswered last time. I was under heavy sleep deprived in the response that you replied to.

What I should have said, and have been knocking myself out to say was instead, something about natural selection or something. I was sleep deprived when I came up with what I should have said--and have forgotten it.

All I can remember of it is the idea of the pride of being the person to write the currently used software. Like wouldn't you want to be maintaining the code that runs the window manager for GNOME? (KDE has its own window manager, apparently). Or rather, one of the choices. I would say that is good resume material... might need to be updated every now and then, but you have to take that first chance you will not make it when there are thirty other software choices.

If you do not develop because the market is satuated, really, you are losing without trying. It is an opportunity. Sure you have to work at it, but you won't make you mark if you don't try.

Therre was more to this argument, but I cannot remember it right now--so it is no help to you, and even less help to me.

-- Jamie Payne

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Re^5: Death and Return of TIMTOWTDI
by jepri (Parson) on Jul 07, 2004 at 16:06 UTC

I think I can see where you were you were going with your points.

Natural selection is often quoted by computer people who possibly don't see all its ramifications (see my homenode for why I know more about natural selection than computing :). The popularity of programs can probably be described better by economics than evolution (e.g. programs don't die, can't breed: marketplace theories probably can do better).

I can see your point about pride of writing popular software, but the people who are maintaining it are often in that position because they were among the first, breaking new ground. Everyone used their work and by default they ended up as "the author and maintainer".

The usual economist response to a saturated market seems to be "open up a new market", in this case by developing something so compelling that everyone has to have it, right now. The economics breaks in both our arguments when anyone can become market leader by taking the leading product and improving it slightly.

The trouble I have with discussing software development in any of these terms is that they don't really apply. Software development isn't driven by an evolutionary need to survive and reproduce, nor is it a product striving for market share. If I had to define it as anything, I'd see it as research, taking ideas from the great unknown, and wrestling them into a usable form for others to benefit from.

___________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

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