CTO Articles
Published in IT World
May 8, 2007
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing
I can hardly see straight at the moment thanks to a bell curve image that refuses to leave my poor head alone. This sort of thing has happened to me before and I have an effective self-medication for it. Namely, I write it down. Crazy idea, reasonable idea, whatever. It does not matter. Once I get it out onto paper (or more accurately into ones and zeros), I can see straight again. So here we go. Self-medication starts.
There are many things in life that fit the classic bell curve we are all familiar with. Take intelligence for example. Most of us sit in the big hump in the middle. Some folk are off to the left into genius territory. Some folk are off to the right into sub-normal territory.
I think there is an interesting relationship between this curve and the tools that software developers choose to use in their work. A relationship which explains - I believe - why so many mainstream software development tools are not as powerful as they theoretically could be.
Here is what I'm thinking. The more powerful a tool is, the easier it is to really mess things up with it. Take something like Visual Basic or Lotus Notes or a 4GL code generator. These are powerful tools. In the hands of an expert they can do amazing things in a very short period of time. However, in the hands of somebody less than competent, they can wreak untold havoc. This sort of tool is a direct fit with that timeless observation that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
This, I think is the core tragedy of powerful tools. Such tools appeal to above-normal practitioners and below-normal practitioners in equal measure. The vast majority - everybody else - sees the scope for havok in these tools more than they see the scope for genius. They thus err on the side of caution and pick tools - for themselves or their team - that sit better with those in the center of the bell curve.
The bell curve effectively guarantees that any tool that fits this description: "with great power comes great responsibility (and the need for unusually high levels of competence.)" is weeded out by the conservative majority who know that "unusually high levels of competence" tends to be in short supply.
So. Imagine you have an uncommonly powerful tool but that tool, by virtue of its extreme power, can be used to wreak havoc by the unwary. You want to cross the chasm. How to do so?
Take some of the power out?
Yes. Yes, that explains some things that have been troubling me. Applications I once liked which, through new iterations became less powerful rather than more powerful. Applications that from my perspective, appear to step backwards in terms of power as time steps forward.
The power reductions have all been attempts by the application creator to protect me from myself!
Yes. Yes. That explains a lot.
Self-medication ends.