Sig Rinde, of Thingamy has a very interesting post on his website. He has worked through the logical design of Thingamy, and has come to the conclusion that one of his previous major elements, specifically the semantic control of the data model with tagging has some deficiencies and will not achieve what he is after.
First, that means that he is continuously revising his ideas, and thinking about how they will work in practice, and with some rigour too. Second, it means that he is prepared to come to uncomfortable conclusions, and stare them in the face. Third, he is prepared to act on what he knows, and revise his development, even at a late stage, (remember the IT adage that a dollar of thought is worth ten dollars of design, a hundred dollars worth of specification, a thousand dollars worth of development, and ten thousand dollars worth of testing, market, shipped and installed code.)
Finally, he has the freedom of action and strength of character to discuss this in public.
Well, that is the antithesis of the corporate software development model. Many organisations have no ten cents worth of vision, no dollar of thought, but with misguided starting points, can manage the other bits, e.g. expensive pointless software.
Imagine the scene if you will, Dilbert style:
"Hello Pointy Haired Boss. I am developing that me-too pile of crap that you intend to peddle to the unimaginative drones in the corporate world, but you know I have had a flash of insight about why we may have been working in the wrong way for the last eight months, and should go for a substantial re-think, and re-write, we might end up later, and over budget, but we will have this really interesting product that will make people think, and maybe even revolutionise the market!"
"My bonus is based on a shipment this quarter, write the damn thing the way it was specified by morons, and shut the feck up."
In other words, bring me lies and good news, and do not point out salient flaws, we will lie about those later.
I am even more fascinated to see which direction Thingamy is going to go in, as I have a lot of respect for Sig's intellect, and am sure that he is going to do something very interesting. Sig has made quite a few friends in SAP, and it is no small part due to the fact that SAP has a surprisingly open and frank development discussion culture, quite Northern European, not unlike Mr Rinde himself.
Go for it Sig, we're all watching with Bated Breath...
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