Nothing Is All Or Nothing

(via Stefan Tilkov)

A sorry commentary on the state of the software industry from Steve Jones...

SAP, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft... These are the companies who your CIO goes to visit and sits through dinners and presentations on their product strategy, and what they are pushing is WS-* in all its ugly glory. This means that in 3 years time you 100% will have WS-* in your company, in a company you work with, or in a company you want to work with.

Don't worry about WS-Dominance. It will never arrive. But beware of WS-Stupidity.

Having some large software vendor or partner inject SOAP into your data center is no reason to allow it to infect all of *your* work. Push WS-Complexity out to just those edges whose outside forces require it. Stop the enemy at the gates. Make the rest as simple as possible. Always assert your control over your own architecture or you will be a loser.

That's what we're doing anyway. We have a CIO that believes in smart people, incremental development, and lasting systems.