Broken Tools (was Re: [prog] [C] strings bug)

[Mary]

On Sat, Apr 12, 2003, Jimen Ching wrote:
> Sounds like the software industry is due some major standardization.
> ;)

I'm not sure how far the analogy holds. Remember, this was forced by
*every* rail passenger having to work with the 10 different times
themself. Every adult in our society does not have to deal with lack of
interoperability in the computing inductry, only professionals have to.

Even if the analogy does hold, I suspect it's more likely to be like the
situation with mechanical parts - which professionals and interested
amateurs deal with and consumers pay for - and you use the
manufacturer's parts by and large, not commodity parts.

Part of the problem with standardisation is that the standard tools
become a commodity, and you lose that way of differentiating yourself
from your competitors. So tool development might become an unattractive
business, because if your tools are going to be just like everyone
else's... why will people buy them.

Joel on Software writes about commodity software here:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

His primary rule is:

        Smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements.

But they don't try and make the product itself a commodity, they want to
differentiate the product from its competition. Which is why we don't
have universal car parts and we may not have universal software "parts".

-Mary