Software and the Google Effect
From Zanecorpwiki
With Google and the Internet in general, you have an explosion of development talent. Capital costs are essentially zero[note 1], the profession pays well and is in high demand, so when you throw free and findable information on top of that, you get a magnification of both the best and worst of the profession.
The good: vast amounts of information at your fingertips. Even the most obscure or tricky question can often be answered and idiomatic, undocumented, or poorly explained technical gotchas can often be quickly ferreted out. The simplest, and perhaps most important, is the simple availability of references. This actually predates Google itself, but it was with Google that it really took off and they proliferated and became more visible. I now code in more languages and platforms than I ever have, but I haven't bought a reference book in almost 10 years. Good developers are now more efficient than ever.
The bad: vast amounts of information at your fingertips. Even the most uninformed and incompetent developer can find example code which they can cut and paste into their project. It kinda looks right, and with enough blind banging, it can stand up to a dog and pony show. For clients that don't know to go any deeper, it can seem like forward progress is being made when in fact all that's happening is crap is being piled on crap. You end up with clients who invest more and more money into applications that grow increasingly fragile and worthless. The more work that's done is simply the more money lost.
Notes
- ↑ Amortize even an expensive workstation over its useful lifespan and software development costs only a few dollars a day in capital expense. Internet connectivity is a little more expensive, but still very cheap and can be had for free if you're clever about it.
