Behind the curve: How not to be a technology laggard

There's also what Fred Brooks called the Second System Effect. The second system you build is the one that falls to pieces trying to improve the first system too much, but from which you learn what not to do when building the next - working - system.

Crap - missed being first post by 2 seconds!

Video Cards.

"The stress was palpable – they couldn't afford to keep buying new Mac after new Mac, so there was constant mental torture over whether to go with the new release or wait for the next one which promised to be significantly better."

I am exactly this way with video cards. On the other hand, I don't mind being 5 years behind in my gaming.

On the other hand

I do a variation of "If it ain't broke don't fix it".

I'll leave things as they are for as long as possible (apart from security upgrades) then when the cuffs are getting frayed I'll set up 'nearly new' in parallel as a test environment and if it's tickety-boo do the actual migration.

I'll never go for the very latest.

Vista and SQL Server 2005? Whoop-dee-doo

Vista and SQL Server 2005? Whoop-dee-doo. Honestly, I wouldn't use either one. But (as bad as Vista is) once it's already on there and already paid for, if it runs the applications why would someone want to (at that point) waste money on something newer? This can be replaced at hardware refresh time. And for the huge cost of SQL Server, and the well-known issues with newer versions dropping support for some old stuff, why wouldn't someone just keep using 2005 if it works? They might want to look into if it's possible to upgrade their software in case they have to get a new server & can't get 2005 for it. But why upgrade just to upgrade?

I thought you were going to rag on people STILL using DOS-based software, old Win-3.1-era software, and so on. Yes, I've seen it -- ridiculously, at the insurance office I saw, each insurance co. (that they sold policies for) seemed to use it's own software, which was often some 20-30 year old thing they wrote once then apparently never updated. This of course means they are running all these 16-bit apps, so no 64-bit Windows. And now that Microsoft has gone to the ridiculous "Who needs version numbers, we'll just keep calling it Windows 10" plan (I hope to hell they change their mind on this!!), they may end up with a situation in the future where "Windows 10" runs 16-bit apps still but "Windows 10" doesn't.

Or the bowling alley that needed some spare computers that a) would fit into a limited space, so not a full tower b) had to have PCI *AND* ISA slots to run some unholy combination of cards to run their bollowing alley scoreboards and stuff. Yep. It was very hard to find any spares for them.

Updates

You know the noise the TV used to make just before the mobile rang? A couple of weeks ago we were in the pub & that noise kept coming over the speakers. The landlord said it was because he was using his phone to play the music. He normally used his iPad but it turned out he'd been one of the early adopters of the borked update. I reminded him of the saying: the early bird catches the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.

You can tell the pioneers by the arrows in their back

I worked for a kitty-litter company that was rolling in the dough for various reasons. We had 3 networked S-100 machines with dual-processor 8-16 bit CPUs (Z-80 & 8088) running a dual-processor aware CP/M (MP/M 8-16) that was able to schedule both 8-bit and 16-bit CP/M programs. Plus we had a nifty $6,000 40MB hard disk (Pragmatics/Fujitsu PD-40M) that came in a cool see-thru visible plastic enclosure. You could see the 12" platters spin, and the stack of heads move. People used various flavors of VT-100 compatible Televideo and other terminals over serial.

Edit: this was 1984 or so, so we were bleeding edge. The IBM PC was introduced while I worked there.

I do miss that company, my boss, and my co-workers.

My roommate brought Linux home from NASA on 40 floppies and we set up a UUCP node with netnews.

Anyway, after being burned by new technology, or the latest version of crappy old technology, I'm a laggard now. I insist on useful features and a reason to upgrade before buying-in

For example, I didn't buy my electric motorcycle until they had real motorcycle suspension (not off-road bicycle stuff) and ABS. ABS is a must-have since it's my main transportation, rain or shine. I have been bitten by various software bugs but the company has stood behind its product.

I held off on SSDs until the "they die at the drop of a hat" furor quieted down.

I'm a generation behind on Intel processors so I could get a cheap machine. I'm only water cooling it for noise, not performance.

I did however buy the very first Android phone as my first smartphone.

Purchase the correct tool ONCE. That's the trick.

My PDP11-based Heath 11A is still fully functional, and a useful teaching tool.

I have a couple Sun 3-series and 4-series computers still doing useful work.

The computer I am typing this out on is an HP zv5000 laptop, 11-ish YO.

If it does the job as intended, it's the correct tool for the job.

People purchasing "the latest" without understanding why need their heads examining.

The Bandwagon Effect

What worries me about the bandwagon that rolls as soon as something becomes "accepted" is the possibility that the bandwagon is flawed in some way. When that happens adjustments are made to the new de facto system to prevent the wheels falling off the bandwagon. The resulting complexity becomes more and more difficult to maintain but nobody is prepared to admit that maybe a back-track might have been the sensible step to have taken. Not just to back-track for the sake of it, but to go back and think about designing things in which - in hindsight - should have been built-in from the get go. Security is a good example of this in various manifestations. Look at the whole thing about email. It started off nice and simple and now everyone bolts on things willy-nilly to try to push it forward into the 21st century without reference to any kind of standard.