The Barney Fife Syndrome

I don't know everything.

Yep, that's right.

No environment drives that fact home more than the world of software design and engineering. Technology changes, new technology emerges and some disappears altogether. Trying to keep up with it all will make your head explode.

How does one stay successful in an ever changing field? How can a business keep existing customers happy yet still stay on the cutting edge, moving forward day-by-day?

In 2000, we embarked on a re-architecture of our application. Luckily, we had a proven version of application in the market and kept it up to date using "outdated technology" while continually developing and moving forward with our new release. If anyone knows the Netscape story, you know that starting over from the ground up is not always a good idea.

Netscape once dominated the web browser market. In the late 90's, they decided to throw away all their code and re-engineer from the ground up. This led to a few years of stagnation while Microsoft was busy developing a superior, up-to-date browser. After several missed deadlines and horrible betas, users moved to Internet Explorer leaving Netscape to play catch up. We all now know who currently dominates the web browser market.

Luckily, we averted such a disaster and in 2003 released our next-generation software. Was it light-years ahead of where we were? No. But it did give us a new (and hopefully better) base on which to build.

After years of blood, sweat and tears we are now faced with a new challenge. A challenge that makes us re-think and re-examine our architecture once again. Hopefully the base we have built will be strong enough to stand up to what lies ahead. In the mean time, I'll try to learn a few new things (hopefully I'll pick the right ones to learn) and painfully resign myself to the fact that noone knows everything (except Randall.. and maybe John.. ok, Jurgen too).