There is nothing new under the sun...

It never fails. I have an absolutely FANTASTIC idea for a blog post. (usually in the shower)

So I try and capture it.

(note: dry-erase + shower = cranky wife)

Of course, in the next 3 days of net wandering I inevitably run across someone who's written up the same thing. And of course it's all dolled up, cuter, wittier, and with better supporting arguments than I would ever have dreamed up.

I'm sure this has something to do with the brain kicking the idea around in the subconscious and when it finds something kinda-sorta similar it's all sweetness and roses and fireworks.

(This is also known as the "I found it in the last place I looked" phenomenon. Of COURSE you did...what kind of idiot continues looking after they've found the object of their search...)

I could be depressed about this. (insert obligatory "we're not worthy!" chant) But I'm not. Well, not really. Because, you see, I can now put my brainpower into thinking about something new.

We've all got a finite amount of brainpower. Let's call it X. Or Q. Or I. (heh...I.Q...nevermind)

Kathy Sierra recently asked "Are our tools making us dumber?" Ie tools that "do it all for us" shortcutting the process to learn what you _need_ to learn to do your job better.

My thoughts on that subject were summed up neatly when she said "How many graphics designers feel the need to "hand tweak" their generated postscript files?" (or something like that) That's right...what comes out of Quark or Pagemaker (oops, InDesign) is good enough.

These computer doohickeys are damn complicated. And we all like to think that everyone should have expertise in whatever area we ourselves already have experience in. Because, you know, you could tweak out 1/n additional performance if they just did "it" right. But if they'd spent their time learning what we know, they wouldn't know what THEY know.

So they use our tool/plug in/whatever to "just get it done", and they can produce something cool. They can build on top of a whole pile of abstractions, and the sum that's spit out at the end is greater than it's parts.

Of course, all this goes without saying that when the performance/accuracy of said part is of primary importance to the product you're producing, rolling your own and/or having control over it's implementation is a good idea. id Software outsourcing the 3d code for Quake would be a "bad thing". Or the network code. But maybe they could have used a 3rd party tool to convert text to bitmaps for displaying status messages. (I don't know...I'm reaching here)

You get the idea. The tools keep getting more complex because the environments we're working in keep getting more complex. Accept it. The old adage of "we're standing on the shoulders of giants" may be true...but I think it's more often "we're balancing precariously on the top of a pile of good to excellent folks who themselves were building on other's works..."

That's not as eloquent as I'd like, but it'll do.