Jeff Atwood has a great piece on the relentless pace of programming change:
“It’s no longer unique for something to be new, no longer interesting when something is shiny. Eventually, you grow weary of shiny new things.”
The Magpie Effect — no sooner do we finally get a chance to check out some new programming platform, it’s already obsolete and out-of-favour.
Why should anyone invest time and energy developing in the latest craze, when even it’s biggest proponents and drum beaters change their minds on the current framework flavour every other week?!
There in, gentle readers, is the moral of the story and why it’s a rare thing indeed to see such technologies embraced by a wider audience or why they seldom seem to gain much long-term traction, despite the hype.
The pace of change is such that both platform and programmer alike become their own worst enemy, dooming the platform before it has any real chance of taking wing.
≡ This is a brief remainders entry relating to the topics of concepts, languages, links, software and written in response to an external article, comment or opinion — refer linked article for completeness and context.
Brendan Borlase is a Systems and Network Administrator living in Adelaide, Australia, having lived, worked and breathed Information Technology for over 12 years. Learn more.
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