This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz
by David Heinemeier Hansson.
Original Post: Calling bullshit on the Enterprise Astronauts
Feed Title: Loud Thinking
Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LoudThinking
Feed Description: All about the full-stack, web-framework Rails for Ruby and on putting it to good effect with Basecamp
James McGovern's ill-conceived rant made a strong attempt at rendering the word 'enterprise' equal to, pardon my french, bullshit, and that's naturally gathering plenty of reactions around the blogosphere.
The lesson here is that all this complexity being pushed by so-called enterprise architects, software vendors and big 5 consulting companies is bullshit. If you are building distributed applications for your business, you really need to ask yourself what is so complex about the problems that you have to solve that makes it require more complex solutions than those that are working on a global scale on the World Wide Web today.
That's the wonder of the web. It's so much harder to sell black holes of complexity when transparent examples of easier, simpler, and less are everywhere. You can only peddle a recipe of more software, more layers, more consultants, and more vendors for so long. The success of the web has stamped this strategy with an expiration date.
Now we could of course just abandon big business to the hands of enterprise astronauts and James McGovern's of the world, but that would be too easy. Yes, we could cherish moments of smug self-satisfaction as the towers of ineptness crumble to the hand of competition at some point in the future. But it is nothing against the joy we could have helping good businesses escape this morass of bad intentions.
So let's keep up the heat. Increase the awareness of alternatives. Strike down the assumptions that big business and big money necessitates the world of hurt that enterprise astronauts carry in their vendor-branded laptop bags.
Previous Topic
