Software: The Agony and the Ecstasy
June 17th, 2008Mozilla Firefox 3.0 came out today. In a word, it’s amazing. Absolutely everything works like it did before, except better, faster, and prettier. All my plug-ins that matter ported across with no drama. Millions of people are downloading Firefox and installing it right now. I suspect 99%+ of them are delighted. I surf for multiple hours every single day, so a slightly faster, slightly better browser is a big, big deal to me.
Yet on the same day, Slashdot posts this article about a memo describing a software project gone so horribly wrong that nothing useful will ever see the light of day. The worst part is that I recognize almost everything in this list from my previous jobs.
What are the differences between these two projects that make one succeed while the other drags along pitifully? Is it open source coders working for the love of it versus career developers whose primary objective is to secure an income stream? Is it management? Is it tools? I have no idea but I’m fascinated. I want to research it and think about it until I’ve got the material for a much better blog post.
