[tivert]

> I remember a consultant telling me “you don’t get it, the point of our app is that you can build ANYTHING the customer withs it”. Well, so is the point of, say, Python.

Yeah. The idea of generalized, reusable platforms are kind of a siren song for business types.

1. Executive notices the company has 5 apps that sit in a similar place in architectural diagrams. In a meeting, she says: "we have 5 different apps that are creating outputs based on various inputs according to business requirements. She declares, we should have ONE platform to replace those 5 apps. Savings!"

2. Platform team gets stood up. Starts to build the that app according to the new executive strategy.

3. Result: you get a shitty programming language (implemented as "configuration files") with a shitty transformation language. Turns out your platform was actually Java and XSLT, and your previous 5 apps could be understood as "configurations" of that platform.

4. New leadership takes over. The new "platform" gets de-platformized, because it sucks. Now the new platform will be built on the cloud!