Will the real CTO please stand up
Posted on June 4, 2008 by Chris DeBrusk
Although I haven’t done as good a job as articulating it as Profy in the post “How Web 2.0 is Killing Software Development“, I totally agree with the premise put forth in her writing. It is time for the engineers, computer scientists and information architects to take back software development.
While on one hand the ease of putting up a website has led to a wide range of interesting new gadgets, it really hasn’t led to much real innovation. I see startups every day that have put up poorly designed, poorly architected and completely unusable sites that won’t scale and have to be held together with duct tape (Twitter anyone?).
This is not software engineering. Scaling is not something you add later but rather something you build into the application from the beginning. Usability isn’t something to deal with post A round but a key part of the design - from version 0.5. Systems should not be in Beta for their entire life.
Software is the only place where engineers throw together things, toss them at the wall and see what sticks. It is a shame we all cannot learn from our peers who design physical machines, bridges, buildings and other systems that are never in “Beta”. Or for that matter, from the folks who build telecommunication systems, banking systems, trading systems and other mission critical applications that, while they still suffer from the challenges of software engineering, are intended to be stable from day one.
Maybe it is time for online development to grow up.
Sphere: Related Content» Filed Under Rants
Comments
One Response to “Will the real CTO please stand up”
Leave a Reply
Subscribe via FeedBurner
Amen!