Why software still stinks

Frederick Brooks, in a famous 1987 essay, declared that the prospect for a programming "silver bullet" -- to slay, once and for all, the monster-like characteristics of so many software development projects -- was dim. But Simonyi said he believes his project will provide that very silver bullet.

You can't fault him for ambition. Or can you? Jaron Lanier, sitting appropriately at the opposite end of the stage from Simonyi, argued that there's a deeper failure of vision in the software world that requires even more radical change. "A lot of stuff in the Mac and Windows world was supposed to be temporary and got wedged into place," he said. "Making programming fundamentally better might be the single most important challenge we face -- and the most difficult one." Today's software world is simply too "brittle" -- one tiny error and everything grinds to a halt: "We're constantly teetering on the edge of catastrophe." Nature and biological systems are much more flexible, adaptable and forgiving, and we should look to them for new answers. "The path forward is being biomimetic."

What about the open-source movement, which over the past decade has won considerable loyalty and enthusiasm in many programming quarters?

"There's this wonderful outpouring of creativity in the open-source world," Lanier said. "So what do they make -- another version of Unix?"

Jef Raskin jumped in. "And what do they put on top of it? Another Windows!"

"What are they thinking?" Lanier continued. "Why is the idealism just about how the code is shared -- what about idealism about the code itself?"

At this point, Andy Hertzfeld, who has devoted himself in recent years to open-source projects like Eazel and Chandler, spoke up for the maligned legions of Linux-heads. "It's because they want people to use the stuff!"

His comment underscored something that's frequently misunderstood about the open-source approach, which is often wrongly stereotyped as loopily communal and out-of-touch with business reality. There's an essential pragmatism to the notion that programmers work best when they can share, and learn from, one another's work. After all, every other field of human endeavor works that way.

Bricklin sent waves of laughter through the auditorium by reading a passage from Lammers' interview with Bill Gates in which the young Microsoft founder explained that his work on different versions of Microsoft's BASIC compiler was shaped by looking at how other programmers had gone about the same task. Gates went on to say that young programmers don't need computer science degrees: "The best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems."

Bricklin finished reading Gates' words and announced, with an impish smile, "This is where Gates and [Richard] Stallman agree!"

The "Programmers at Work" panelists were full of optimism about new opportunities to reinvent software -- in the mobile-phone world (where, Scott Kim noted, the constraints of small screens and tiny memory made it feel "like the early days" again), in the new universe of RF tags, and in the still-unfolding saga of global networking. Bob Carr reminded everyone that technology transformations usually take 20 years to unfold -- "I remember thinking in 1987 that the PC industry was mature, it was over" -- and that the Internet is only halfway through that cycle.

Still, that picture of Bill Gates dumpster-diving for operating-system code was hard to shake. Finding new ways to think about programming and to make better software demands a willingness for pioneers to open up their work so others can learn from it. "Getting the software industry on a more open, fair and level playing field," as Hertzfeld put it, is a prerequisite for any leap forward in the programming world. Software patents are a looming train wreck; competition in most "end-user" software is largely a distant memory. Simonyi's technical bottleneck is also a social, political and business logjam.

In the era of "Programmers at Work," it was possible to imagine the lone-hero programmer as a genius operating beyond the reach of political and social forces. Today, even the best programmers can't ignore the vast web of interdependence their own work has helped shape.

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