Software is too Important to be Left to Programmers

Every programmer, as well as any art director, creative director, or project manager that works with digital media should read this interview with Sidney Dijkstra.

I'm amazed at how, throughout my short and frustrating career in digital media, how many people still don't get this. In every case, it turns out to be one of two things (or both): A cult of personality forms around the leader of a programming team with a (perhaps well deserved) bunker mentality, or leadership that doesn't understand jack-a-doody about digital media.

This seems to especially be the case when people are promoted to head up digital media projects based on seniority and not expertise. It's a huge gap between what you know and don't know about these initiatives, but somehow if you can run a photography department or wrote a book on dog breeding then that's seen as pretty much the same thing. Is it because everyone knows how to check e-mail?

Books on this very subject have been written for years! So why is the creation of the business case left to the marketers -- many of whom have a "don't know, don't want to know" mentality about what's possible and what the technology issues are -- where it then gets built into an impossible project smothered in buzzwords and good intentions. Then the programming team gets a hold of it, rolls its eyes, makes a few "suggestions," but now the deadline is slipping so we're off to the races with no real plan in place, and the project sucks and everyone hates it.

It's truly amazing that it continues to happen, and that I'm surprised every time. Maybe I should take the positive approach and write a book about it.