On Democracy
So Visual Studio 2008 is out, and by all accounts it is pretty bling-tastic. LINQ is getting a lot of press since it’s release late last year. I just finished reading this article over at SD Times, and I wanted to comment.
Democracy is slow. Technology moves fast. I’m not sure they’re a good mating. I’ve heard it claimed that a negative part of Microsoft’s development platform is that it is constantly changing. Java hasn’t changed very much. They added some stuff in 5 and 6, but nothing like what MS is doing in every incremental revision of .NET. .NET is really impressive these days. It’s not one language that’s impressive, or one technology, or one tool, but the entire platform. There’s a lot of new technology that is put together really well.
I think this is due to the fact that there is someone, somewhere in Microsoft with “vision”. Maybe not just one person, but at least some smallish team leading development efforts. Java has implemented this sort of open democracy JSR proposal process, but I’m not convinced democracy belongs in software development. I feel that someone or a small group with a passionate vision can create new innovative things, while a large democracy oriented team just sort of takes so long that it’s always playing catch up. It’s probably “safer” to have a democracy, but taking risks is an important part of progress.
Maybe I’m wrong. What are your thoughts? Are there software projects where democracy created very innovative things that I’m not considering?
