Makesites Insider

Every line's been accounted for and tested… The community has voted with their applications and contributions… When all's said and done, there's a piece of software left, a monument, testament to the effort and ability put into creating a working solution. Now, lets make sure it stays relevant and delay the inevitability of becoming a relic of the past.

You did it. You started your own project, delivered a working solution, even got traction from the community. It's all happening, and it's happening pretty fast. All your hopes and dreams came true. The feeling of relief should be imminent, but there are no signs of that happening any time soon... The journey has only just begun.

As software is dominating our modern society in all regards, there are various practices, methodologies and business models surrounding its evolution; although the holy grail of software development could be open source. The community, the personal success stories, the historical paradigm shifts that have changed the world many times are all very compelling for young and ambitious developers alike. Open source may seem as alluring to some as it is unobtainable to others...

A made up word conceived by developers to describe software that performs well and communicate how to achieve performance improvements.

In what is one of the most memorable "borrowed" quotes of Steve Jobs, this piece of wisdom echoes true across the ages. It is well suited to rekindle our interest and appreciation for it with this brief walkthrough, possibly highlighting less obvious aspects of its meaning, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of Apple.

We have to make our tech community great again. We have to rebuild our industry. And we have a long way to go. We are just in such serious trouble because we've gone down the wrong path. I am so sick of the 1% getting all this preferential treatment. Enough is enough. We need to unite and work together if we are going to get through this.

Drawing on cave walls was one of those definitive moments where our ancestors showed superior intellect. Since then, art forms have been an integral part of our expression as a species, translating the human condition into tangible objects and experiences. It’s interesting to look into those attributes that elevate a simple creation to a form of art and investigate the parallels with application development.

The road is long, with many a winding turn, as the song goes. And the experience of open source development holds more than a few painful surprises: Failure, betrayal, discredit, shaming, envy... Time to reflect.

How many apps have come and gone? How many developers have had their moment, shining under the public spotlight as an example of ingenuity and achievement, only to be absorbed and forgotten by the monolithic machine we call “big business”? What is excellent one day becomes obsolete the next. As a result, users experience our products on a superficial level and have no problem discarding in an instant what might have taken years to create. Is this the only way things can be?

A cautionary tale about machine intelligence and how it can aid in sustaining the Web; the importance of automation in our professional lives and a foresight in embracing the next evolutionary step in our human/machine relationship.