Re(2): The future of computing

Chris,

IMHO, you are making a good point & then carrying it too far. If you are
saying that IS "professionals" (or anyone) should not knowingly recommend
inferior products for their own private gain, then I think most of us
would agree with you.

But if you are saying that that it is somehow unprofessionally lazy or
irresponsible not to familiarize ourselves with every product out there
before making a recommendation (because that's the only way we can pick
the "best"), then I think you're being unrealistic. Sure, it would be nice
if we all did that, but there are an awful lot of products, and it takes
time and money to learn enough to be useful. Note: I'm not saying we
shouldn't try -- and keep trying -- to do a better job; just that darned
few of us will every be able to be as completely thorough as this ideal
calls for.

Finally, if you're faulting us for our "willingness . . . to install a
solution . . . simply because that is the solution [we] are familiar
with", then I have to ask: are you really recommending that we install
solutions that we are _not_ familiar with? Going back to my two previous
points, if we are are indeed acting in good faith, and we don't have the
resources (mental, physical, financial, temporal) to know all the answers,
aren't we better off putting in a solution that we know will work rather
than going with something that
a-lot-of-people-say-is-better-but-we-don't-personally-know-it?

This reminds me of the "best vs 'good enough'" thread of a few months ago
-- I firmly believe that in the real world, where different priorities
usually compete for inadequate resources, "good enough" is often precisely
that, and trying to turn "good enough" into "best" in one area means not
spending the effort turning "bad" into "good enough" somewhere else.
Results are usually judged not on one single area, but on the balance of
various factors (which may be competing).

JMHO. For the record, though, I would love to be paid well to do nothing
but research all possible tools for doing my job (business application
programming) -- making recommendations, writing programs, or otherwise
producing billable results only when I felt absolutely sure that I
thoroughly understood everything I needed to understand before doing so.
If you hear of such a job, please let me know (privately, please -- I
wouldn't want to distract anyone else on the list ;-)). In the meantime, I
expect I'll keep doing what I'm doing now: trying hard to keep up with new
tools and technologies while producing enough actual results to convince
my employer I'm worth the expense. 



Mike Naughton
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Judd Wire, Inc.
124 Turnpike Road
Turners Falls, MA  01376
413-863-4357 x444
mnaughton@juddwire.com

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