THE CODE ISSUE 20

Duda Owner IONOS • July 27, 2015

Here is another one of my favorite quotes from the special double issue of Bloomberg Businessweek on computer coding. This one addresses the frustrations of how much code you create yourself versus how much code you buy off the shelf. It becomes an especially important question when your company is facing a major IT systems problem (Paul Ford, “The Code Issue”, 6/15/15–6/28/15, p. 78):

“ [The question involves] a way to use more off-the-shelf components, a way to buy your way out of this.

. . . Sort of, . . . but when you’re making a system that will integrate with the systems around it and your company is a set of such systems, nothing is truly off the shelf. There are tools and packages and libraries, and if you have any wit at all you already use well-documented, free code for things such as e-mail validation, but that obviates only so much. . . .

You come to the conclusion: The world is broken. ”

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