Software Industry, following the footsteps of older and mature disciplines, evolves into a lad in desperate need of defining its own path, destiny and glory.
Once upon a time, in the deepest forest on the world’s tallest mountains there lived a Great Sage. Like its’ with all the Sages, the Great Sage also had many disciples and like all Sages, he had some favorites as well. To be precise there were three of his disciples who were apple of his eyes (well, there is a disbalance, what with only two eyes and three apples, but let’s live with it).
To cut the story really really short, on their graduation day Great Sage asked the disciples, to their great surprise and dismay, to engage in trade instead of following his footsteps. Sages’ logic being that by entering into a trade, the disciples could impact larger number of lives, create more wealth for the economy and have flourishing impact across larger geo-political area.
Bowing their head to the wishes of the Great Sage, the disciples went ahead and created breakthrough industries by initially being in different trades and later building diverse industries. This took numerous decades to achieve. On the way they faced numerous challenges of economic crisis, global wars and natural calamities. But, Oh boy! Were they a resilient lot? They always bounced back with better solutions, services and products. Considering their background (Sages, schools, universities and what have you) they also integrated thoughts of current institutions and defined ground breaking processes, thoughts and methodologies.
Many decades later, on another mountain forest not so far, there was a different Sage and another bright disciple. While this lad (the new disciple) was undergoing his education with the Sage, world had, having gone through rapid growth, grown smaller (something to do with muscles; they reduce with age, don’t they?) and evolved into a cauldron boiling and brimming with wealth but also with unprecedented inter-dependence.
Stage was set for another revolution.
Things were happening fast. It was as if whole world was moving so fast that things looked stand still. All the industries, started by our trio-disciples and their successors, were spinning new and new services and products at a rate which was unprecedented. For the new world Sun was moving too fast, it was thus only for the Empire which came up with the punch line of “sun never sets on the empire”. There goes our Global Delivery model!
And then enters our protagonist!
With brand new and fresh thought of introducing a product which would help humankind do one simple and basic task faster. “Computation” (calculations for uninitiated)!
People around laughed, smirked and chided at the idea. Who would need something to calculate when anybody could do it easily? What was so “novel” about it? Well our lad and his successors kept their heads down and improved on the product. They improved it so much that..! Well, again, lets’ cut the story short; they changed “almost” everything that was happening around at that time.
Their product not only helped other industries to perform tasks faster but also achieve some things which would have been very tough (if not impossible) to achieve without the “computing device”. Needles to say the “computation product” also evolved into something which was not envisaged by our protagonist also.
Over a period of time the “computation device” evolved into two streams. One of the streams pertained to the device itself and another to the “instructions” (software for later starters) which controlled the device. But both were inseparable and could not live without each other. So for the sake of simplicity let’s refer to them as one.
But behold! While doing all the great stuff and also sustain the growth, they started following (with some modifications) the trio-disciples’ processes, thoughts and methodologies. It’s not that there was anything wrong with these processes et all. What they did not realize was that these were not “the right fit” for their “industry”. The “computation device” was unparalleled in thought, implementation and usage. There was no such single device which can be used for unimaginably varied tasks. It required different set of people for development as well. It spawned a new stream in education itself. But trio’s processes et-all were the norm at that time and, moreover, they were very content with their own “new” “computation product”.
Even with the set principals and processes the “computation product” evolved, however, to only a certain extent, which was finitely possible by the underlying (or followed) processes, values and goals.
Now, the thing is that “Infinite” is either applicable to universe or human feelings (and thus sufferings). There is nothing like infinite growth. For the whole world, which was already moving quite fast, to say the least, the “computation product” was added fuel to the fire. All the industries wanted to achieve tomorrow’s growth today, including the “computation product” industry. Things were happening quite nicely for everybody.
But then there is something called gravity. Gravity is good. It keeps things together.
But it also pulls things down. Well, you might say “what has gravity to do with the “computation product”? “
Right, It has nothing much to do with it. At least not directly.
You see. Most of the physical products (and most of “not-so-physical services”) live with one definite reality and that’s GRAVITY. Our lads’ “computation product” had a relation with “unreal” (pick your choice of synonyms: void, nothingness, untouchable, virtual). The “computation product” itself was physical but the controlling instructions to it were (in true sense) virtual. No one could touch them! The results produced were “virtual”. It was NOT directly impacted by the gravity.
Now you see “no-relationship” relationship? No? Ok, whatever, lets proceed to the conclusion of this rather dry posting.
That’s’ where the “computation device” is today.
A Device which has provided solutions capable of simulating most difficult scenarios for other industries and applications but which cannot predict the measureable impacts to itself (should somebody require a change).
A Device which can help other industries produce close to defect-free products but cannot claim so itself.
Time is not yet ripe but shall be so soon to take the device to next level wherein device can “change” at the blink of an eye, it can produce predictable results no matter what the underlying platform is, no matter who (read developer or team) develops solutions on device would require same efforts, schedules and “no-defects”.
Are we thinking of achieving it?
Can we achieve it?
Surely we can.
