The
Tide Recedes: Software, ITThe
Tide Recedes: Software, ITTue 6/09/2009 11:09 am. First Spolsky revealed to me the
corporate
nature of the guru plague. ... Then, perusing the pitiful 6/09 issue
of Microsoft’s MSDN magazine
— which I actually pay money
for! — I realized at last what has happened to my precious software
world: it’s all gone corporate.
... The death of Dr. Dobb’s
and its zombie incarnation in InformationWeek,
the almost-complete purge of the last remnants of individual programming
from Visual Studio
magazine along with the editor — it’s all the same! ... The
only topic
worth printing is how to get your source-control multiple-tier
super-complicated incredibly fragile throw-away towering environment
IDE software tottering on! ... And, as I have noted in these pages
elsewhere, you read it here last!
... Of course the magazines, in
their last pitiful gasps, are going over to the darkness of IT;
they ran out of programmers and/or other people stupid-enough to read
their relentless puffery — except me! — all presumably fled
to the web
and/or Asia, so all that’s
left is IT! — aka corporate software;
the temporary junk the corporations tie their departments
together-with, in a desperate and surprisingly-unsuccessful attempt to
leverage their huge size into permanent monopoly! ... But the
corporate guys still got some money! ... There are still, the magazines
desperately hope, untapped veins of stupidity somewhere in those
endless hallways! ... And, I’d reckon, there
are! ... But perhaps not stupid enough to buy
the magazines. ... But they don’t 
have to; they get them for free,
they’re shot out of cannons
their way, and perhaps they’ll buy something from those beautiful
4-color ads, otherwise known as “articles”....
... And I just realized even MacTech’s gone corporate! ... And that I mixed-up two of Gore Vidal’s lunatic-cult end-of-the-world books, Kalki (1978) and Messiah (1954), the latter of which is where a suicide cult (“It’s good to die”) takes over except for a few Islamic backwaters. ... I was thinking of MacTech magazine as the backwater — but no no, the rot is everywhere....
... So the little thinkey piece at the end of the June MSDN actually has one of those “team building” “personal growth” specialists — the bogus bio at the end of the article says these things! — blathering on about being nice! ... I expected an adorable kitten clinging to a branch captioned “hanging-on”. ... I mean, I knew Microsoft was partial to the dark side — but this! ... Ah, it is indeed bitter to be an aging programmer....
