Comment by aristofun
3 days ago
> For folks who love software, it absolutely is a key part.
Those are the folks from early days when it was more about math (which is an art) and exploration rather than about actual software _engineering_.
If you're building new algorithms, new computers etc. - yes, your product is the tool itself. But this is a very limited case these days.
Unfortunately many folks drag this attitude in their business software domain and this leads to overengineering and redundant complexity.
With experience you can smell if this part of codebase was mostly made by folks who just like engineering for the sake of it, rather than people trying to reach the business goal in a reasonable time/cost. And this smell is terrible.
I think you may be missing my point. I'm not conflating products and engineering tools, but talking about how art and beauty (as Platonic ideals) can hopefully be preserved or resurrected in the current environment. Engineering "for the sake of it" without a view to business needs does carry pitfalls like you mentioned - that's not what I'm promoting. Leave that to universities and hobby projects (which are very important -- absent wealthy patrons of the arts, the best of culture in a civilization arises from small communities of learning and creative leisure).
But just like an architect designing a beautiful bridge that becomes a landmark, with the right management and product-market fit, it can be possible to profitably build beautiful software products for people. There are real, profitable businesses that do this, and people love their software.
People enjoy and value beautiful things; as a software business culture we ought to value creating them.