The Plague of the Industrialist

The industrial revolution taught us about assembly lines, steps, measurement and process. It taught us to maximize output and drive down costs. It taught us to maximize efficiency and cut down excess waste. These can all be good things rightfully applied, but they’ve never been good things for creativity and art.

The industrialist’s mindset has leaked its way into everything, particularly software development. Designers are viewed as machines who take ideas and translate them into two dimensional space. Developers are the human compilers who turn those designs into code. We have “backlogs” for the assembly line, “requirements” as instructions for the design machine and “acceptance criteria” for the human compiler. So much so that many of these roles are simply sourced to a third party, typically a third party who cares little to nothing about the product, or the problem that product is trying to solve.

Software is an art form. It isn’t meant to be created using the industrial machine. Consider the major players in software today… Facebook, Instagram, Google, Windows, Linux, OSX… they all had their roots planted by someone who was deeply invested in solving a problem. Not with some assembly line of programmers contented to live a life creating someone else’s dream. No it was their dream. Their problem to solve.

Software is art. Treat it like one.