We like to think we can wear our big-kid pants but our industry is unmistakably in its infancy.
Software development is a not a nascent science. It's not a budding form of engineering. It's not a young profession ready to grow into something big and strong.
We are the precursors to that. We're not doctors, we're shamen. We're not lawyers, we're sophists. We're not chemists, we're alchemists.
Sure, there's nothing magical about how software works. It's not about whether or not magic actually exists. It's about whether or not magical thinking is engaged by a discipline's practitioners.
Besides. Even though the fundamental forces in how software works are pretty well-understood by some, very little is understood about how it is developed among the many.
We're getting better every day, sure, but let's not let a little success go to our heads. Let's be humble and recognize that future moderns will look back on us as primitives.
If we do our very best, our progeny will regard our ideas about how software is made as adorable.
That's okay. Every discipline must go through its formative stage. If you don't need to be right, it can be a thrill to be part of one.
We just need to make sure we question everything and don't take ourselves too seriously.
