|
There's truth in it, but he omits the context for why these changes happened. In 1990, real software companies could get away with shipping something major less than annually. Companies paced development to events like the annual Comdex. No company was expected to ship production software weekly, let alone daily. Competitive threats arose more slowly because there was less capital. The US software industry could be reasonably sure a Chinese firm wasn't going to suddenly arrive and become a material strategic concern in a few quarters. Seriously, read books describing 1990s era software dev and see how slowly things are paced before the Internet really hit. Look at the time scales involved. Even the rise of mighty Microsoft, considered the poster child of rapid high-tech growth circa 1992, pales in comparison to the Internet giants. The world sped up. I hate the meeting culture we have now, but it's important to understand that it is a response to the pace of change rapidly increasing over the last 24 hours. The other thing that really happened is the consumerization of software. In 1990, a much smaller slice of people used any computer in a given day. Frequently, those people could be expected to have undergone specific training for your product. Today, the number approaches 100% of adults globally. This means a higher level of fit, finish, and robustness are required now versus in 1990. Expectations are far higher. Third, and I can't believe this needs to be said, but Microsoft was known for especially buggy software during the glory days highlighted in the article. Their OS releases were frequently late. They had to abort/restart the Vista project. Aside from the aesthetic factors of crashy software, it is somewhat obviously bad to have a multi-billion dollar company be unable to predict when (if?) its flagship products will ship, and in what form. Obviously, something had to change. There's a lot to learn from the old days, but if one doesn't understand why things changed, one is likely to take the wrong lessons from history. |
Yes. Our customers were, for the most part, nerds like us in the 90's. We knew what features they wanted because we wanted them.