tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13296248.post115144676951508889..comments2024-02-12T00:47:08.699-08:00Comments on David Weiss: Small (relatively speaking)David Weisshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629153569649264575noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13296248.post-1151503608608301022006-06-28T07:06:00.000-07:002006-06-28T07:06:00.000-07:00Not having been of significant age in the 70's or ...Not having been of significant age in the 70's or 80's I've grown up with the idea of software companies, for the most part, being fairly large organizations. It seems as though the industry as a whole is following the same track as most other technical fields. Where once you had two brothers building the first airplane in the garage you now have multinationals pumping out jumbo jets. While it may appear self evident, the smaller form clearly led to the larger, but was unsuited to remain competitive. The amount of prior knowledge, skill, regulation, and level of product quality required makes most competitive development only feasible for large companies in a rapidly evolving industry; be they development houses or plane manufacturers. As such, competition in the established software domains is limited by the sheer weight large companies hold. <BR/><BR/>That said, innovative development in new domains and problem areas may be much more likely to come from small houses in much the same way that the occasional revolutionary discovery is made by the garage tinker. There simply is not so much existing practice to accommodate and this allows a smaller number of people to be amazingly successful. Additionally, the 'requirements' placed upon innovative products are not the same as the standards products in established domains are held to. Compare early web browsers to their far evolved brothers as an illustration. To argue whether one form is superior to the other ignores the possibility that they may both be useful forms depending on what you're trying to accomplish.<BR/><BR/>Much of this is essentially what Mena gets at in her bullet points albeit from a different direction.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com