Phil Henshaw wrote: > There are many fascinating issues here, but I think the two main reasons > good stuff gets dumped are that things that work a) usually break rules > that make people feel uncomfortable about change, or b) would put > investors at a temporary disadvantage competitively, and so get filtered > out despite long term advantages. > I think all of Owen's reasons turn out to be variants of his #3 reason. If you have the belief that there are preferred tools for different kinds of jobs, and you do different jobs to achieve a larger goal, then you should expect to be facile with different kinds of tools.
If the tools conflict instead of complement each other, there is a problem. The typical problem with many `beautiful' (e.g. academically developed) tools is that they have trouble interoperating with standard tools. And further, those that claim their tools/frameworks are so wonderful may in part be right but also may in part be guilty of patting themselves on the back a bit too much. While possible, the idea that university or hobby software can be better than software developed by a multi-billion dollar corporations doesn't jump out as a likely scenario. Interoperability is God, and failing to provide it is a fine reason for a software project to fail! ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
