127 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
127 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
[1]
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• [2]Home
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• [3]Articles
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• [4]Subscribe
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• [5]Work
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• [6]About
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•
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The beauty of finished software
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October 31, 2023
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Let me introduce you to [8]WordStar 4.0, a popular word processor from the
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early 80s.
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Wordstar 4.0 WordStar 4.0
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As old as it seems, George R.R. Martin used it to write “A Song of Ice and
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Fire”.
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Why would someone use such an old piece of software to write over 5,000 pages?
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I love how he puts it:
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It does everything I want a word processing program to do and it doesn't do
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anything else. I don't want any help. I hate some of these modern systems
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where you type up a lowercase letter and it becomes a capital. I don't want
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a capital, if I'd wanted a capital, I would have typed the capital.[9]
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George R.R. Martin
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This program embodies the concept of finished software — a software you can use
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forever with no unneeded changes.
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Finished software is software that’s not expected to change, and that’s a
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feature! You can rely on it to do some real work.
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Once you get used to the software, once the software works for you, you don’t
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need to learn anything new; the interface will exactly be the same, and all
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your files will stay relevant. No migrations, no new payments, no new changes.
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This kind of software can be created intentionally, with a compromise from the
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creators that they won’t bother you with things you don’t need, and only the
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absolutely necessary will change, like minor updates to make it compatible with
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new operating systems.
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Sometimes, finished software happens accidentally; maybe the company behind it
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has disappeared, or the product has been abandoned.
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There are also some great examples in the UNIX world of finished software:
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commands like cd(to change the current directory) or ls(to list what’s there)
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won’t ever change in a significant way. You can rely on them until the end of
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your career.
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The seduction of constant updates
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Our expectations for software are different from other products we use in our
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daily lives.
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When we buy a physical product, we accept that it won’t change in its lifetime.
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We’ll use it until it wears off, and we replace it. We can rely on that product
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not evolving; the gas pedal in my car will always be in the same place.
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However, when it comes to software, we usually have the ingrained expectations
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of perpetual updates. We believe that if software doesn’t evolve it’ll be
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boring, old and unusable. If we see an app with no updates in the last year, we
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think the creator might be dead.
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We also expect new versions of any software will be better than the previous
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ones. Once it’s released, most of our problems will be solved! What a deceiving
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lie.
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Sometimes, a software upgrade is a step backward: less usable, less stable,
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with new bugs. Even if it’s genuinely better, there’s the learning curve. You
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were efficient with the old version, but now your most used button is on the
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other side of the screen under a hidden menu.
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Finished software is a good reminder
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In a world where constant change is the norm, finished software provides a
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breath of fresh air. It’s a reminder that reliability, consistency, and user
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satisfaction can coexist in the realm of software development.
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So the next time you find yourself yearning for the latest update, remember
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that sometimes, the best software is the one that doesn’t change at all.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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References
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[1] George R.R. Martin in Conan show (2014). [10]https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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v=X5REM-3nWHg.
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[12][ ]
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[13][Subscribe]
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Or use the [14]RSS feed link.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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This site is ads-free and done in my free time. [15]Buy Me A Coffee to help me
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keep working on it.
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© 2023 [16]Home | [17]Mastodon | [18]Twitter | [19]RSS feed | [20]Buy Me A
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Coffee[21]
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References:
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[1] https://josem.co/
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[2] https://josem.co/
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[3] https://josem.co/articles/
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[4] https://josem.co/subscribe/
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[5] https://josem.co/work/
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[6] https://josem.co/about/
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[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar
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[9] https://josem.co/the-beauty-of-finished-software/#rf1
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[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5REM-3nWHg
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[14] https://josem.co/articles/index.xml
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[15] https://www.buymeacoffee.com/josem.co
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[16] https://josem.co/
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[17] https://mstdn.social/@josem
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[18] https://twitter.com/gilgado_
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[19] https://josem.co/articles/index.xml
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[20] https://www.buymeacoffee.com/josem.co
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[21] https://josem.co/the-beauty-of-finished-software/#top
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