Perhaps yet another way to think about APL's role in todays
marketplace is to consider the differences between an engineer and an
inventor. In my meager opinion, today's mainstream development
offerings are not particularly bad tools for software engineers. The
process or algorithm or workflow or whatever had been invented
(possibly by an APLer some 20 years ago) and the job today is to
implement this is one of the two approved Newspeak languages.
Speaking for myself, I would never call myself a software engineer.
Inventor is more like it, complete with crazy hair, bad breath, yellow
teeth, -8.5 O.D. R&L, an so on. On Halloween, I put on a lab coat,
though I never need it in real life. This is not to say that I have
no respect for others' work or inventions, nor that I don't need
program comments or do***entation. This is also not to say that I
prefer re-inventing over reuse. But my mindset has always been
program development is more akin to inventing.
Engineering stresses other dimensions of the problem. We know how to
build a bridge, but what metal should we use? One particular alloy
may be optimal or too costly or too far away. The manager's brother
is a material supplier and has paid enormous sums in bribes to supply
concrete. Engineering is more about refining or perfecting an
existing problem to fit existing (economic) conditions.
Having said that, everywhere you look, the world is becoming more
"cor****ate". The word "inventor" carries with it the value
"individualist", and in this world, individualists, at least
successful ones, are becoming more and more scarce. There was a time,
the 1880s, 1960s, 1980s, whenever, that a an individualist approach to
a problem, be it inventing, consulting, sales, or advertising, could
be wildly successful. Business was fun. There is some room for that,
and new op****tunities open up from time to time while existing ones go
away. But the trend continues to favor the cor****ates.
One hope for the decor****atisation of humanity is the collaborative
nature of the new Web. But it's going to take some time.
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