One of the interesting things I've found in software development is that I find myself requesting many more changes that I would in many other parts of my life. As much as I'd like to do work on our house, car, or something else, I don't contract for them as often, partially because it's a large effort. It somehow seems easier to plan more changes in software than the physical world. Perhaps that's because software is seemingly so much more morph-able than anything else I've run across. Or because there's less waste when you make changes.
In many ways that's true, but the lack of constraints in building software to me means that you have to decide on artificial limits or you can get too distracted. Lots of people don't like those limits, but I really believe they're critical to our success as humans. In many ways having too much freedom causes us problems.
I bet more than a few of you can relate to this. Many of you are busy, between work, family, hobbies and commitments, it's hard to find time to do anything. So when you suddenly get a free day, say you don't have something scheduled on a Saturday and your spouse takes the kids, what do you do? If you're like me, you might get paralyzed and not sure what to do, ending up either bouncing from one thing to the next, trying to get everything done and ending up finishing nothing. Or you might shut down, just find yourself unable to make a decision and site around.
I think having resource constraints forces you to plan a little bit and try to be efficient with what you have. So many of us are drawn to this, and are intrigued. Look at the popularity of McGyver, Robot Wars, Home Makeover, and more shows that work with limited resources to get something done. I read Make magazine and think it's one of the neatest periodicals I've seen. Watching what people can do when they put their minds to it is amazing.
As we look to build new applications, it's important that we look forward, plan ahead, and stay flexible. However it's also important that we constrain ourselves to solving the problems we need to solve and not get distracted by the shiny bits of the technology.
Steve Jones
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