Prosaic Programming

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist. - Oscar Wilde

While there will increasingly be a place for "integrators" of software, I think that there's a point that's lost on all but a few: someone still has to write the apps in the first place.

In my view of the software world, there's 3 broad categories of people: 1) Software creators, 2) Software consumers and 3) Software users.

Sofware creators are people that create applications from the ground up or from low levels of abstractions - this group can be thought of as the primary producers of software.

Software consumers are the integrators.  They will take applications that are written by the first group and install, configure and customize these applications.  This could be something such as delivering a solution such as:  Content Management Server + Sharepoint + Office.  Microsoft seem to be spending a lot of energy in targetting this area of sofware.

Software users are the end users of the software products that are created and delivered by the above groups.

Software Creator

• Creates Content Management Server
• Creates Sharepoint
• Creates Office

Sofware Consumer

• Creates a product called "Custom Intranet" which is a bundle of the above products with some custom notification modules and specifically configured for a specific end user

Software End User

• User of the "Custom Intranet" product

Link of the day: http://www.bml.psy.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Demos/BMLwalker.html