Notes on the human aspects of being a techie……….
Jim Gray going missing is a big deal not just because of his work on transactions, databases and the like – he’s a human being that made a significant contribution. Nor was he one-dimensional, hence his reason for being at sea and, if he is to be lost, perhaps this is the way he’d want it?
Good software comes from creativity, energy, pride, obsession, difficult to foster in a constrained environment such as the average enterprise where the “more code now” mantra is chanted un-ceasingly and without consideration for higher concerns such as pausing for thought or building creative, progressive solutions to business problems.
Why are we obsessed with one size fits all? There must be only one platform, there must be one framework, there must be one specification, we must all agree. This is mass adoption, not mass innovation. There should be no one size fits all but that’s where we try to go, destroying any room for individualism.
This stuff is important, there’s more to life than code. We claim to be a creative discipline and yet we hide from our emotion or attempt to control when/where/if emotional discussion happens. This is confining the human spirit, shying away from self knowledge, leading to a grey, featureless (work) life and stifles our creative selves.
Obsessively and mechanically adding features to language or system because they can be found elsewhere ignores the greater philosophical aspects. Languages or systems are styled, they are the way they are because they were framed by a particular line of thinking. Every little piece we add should also follow that line of thinking for otherwise we end up with an incoherent, complex mass.
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