A Rationale For Task Driven Software
In his travelogue Wind Sand and Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupery notes:
Employed as an aviator, it was often required that he pilot his craft through such harsh topographies as the Sahara and Andes. And these experiences taught Saint-Exupery a seminal truth: fewer moving parts are a decidedly good thing.
The astute software author will recognize these principals as form follows function. To quantify, put it to the test, and you'll find that the end-user invariably chooses the simplest means of navigation over more baroque methods.
With precious few exceptions, current trends in software design fret more over appearance than usability. One has to wonder; does a skinned application offer an improvement over a given standard, or simply look sexy despite using more resources? Certainly nothing wrong with looking sharp, but c'mon - software is a tool, not an object d'art.
I've seen it happen many times over in the programming sphere; a new methodology is introduced with much fanfare, annointed the savior of the New Age, and then discarded just as quickly. The result? Once perfectly fine software now tricked out and retro-fitted with any number of ill-conceived, bolt-on schemes. Another layer, another abstraction.
An honest appraisal is to acknowledge that pc's today suffer from myriad problems: security issues, constant updates, and bloated, buggy software. When core orthodoxy revels in accumulated complexity, clearly, the situation is untenable. And this is where I've drawn a line... Its time for a fresh start. Time for a more thoughtful, reasoned approach.
At this site, you'll find: code, software, and various technical papers dealing mostly, but not exclusively, with programming issues. Some of the items listed among these pages are open source, while others are not. And still other projects are OS agnostic entirely. Its my earnest hope that'll you'll find the content here to be focused, coherent, and easy to use.
Michael S. Sanders/Topcat Software LLC. GPG Key