The great thing about Software

In software today you can "drop it in and see what happens" and if it explodes into a thousand pieces, you know you have to go back and re-think it. I keep having to remind myself that software is different. There's zero cost to such an explosion, if you have a backup copy of everything of course. It's quite easy to try, try and try again.

The best software products are applications that do things users care about.

Back in the 80s it was Wordstar, dBASE and then Superbase/Access. Lotus 1-2-3 had a macro language, it was weak, but it was widely used because 1-2-3 was so popular with users. Today it's WordPress.

The best one of all of course is JavaScript, a very bizarre language in a totally underpowered environment that reaches into every nook and cranny of the modern world. It's not an easy environment to work with, you'd never design one that worked that way, but the draw of all the users makes up for its sins. It's just amazing to see the collective energy and ambition of the JavaScript community. I've been programming a long time, on a lot of platforms, and have never seen anything like this. See fotodesignarri for an example.