elarson’s posterous

I recently read about a campaign to fix outlook and it got me thinking. Why hasn't Microsoft considered starting fresh on any of their software? My personal choice would be a reset on Internet Explorer. The browser wars are over and Microsoft won. It's too bad the web lost. At work we've been considering trying out Flex for some more intensive UI elements and it occurred to me that the consistency alone would probably be worth losing the hacky tests we have to keep up in order to feel confident releasing javascript intensive code on multiple platforms.

Random web developer wish lists aside, it is tough to recognize when some piece of software should be rewritten from scratch. Weighing the pros and cons rarely provides a true measure of the whether you'll be successful or not. Yet, even without a good means of measuring needs, it is clear that a rewrite can be very helpful. I think Apple provides an excellent model for rewrites. They have successfully rewritten their operating system, a web browser, and an office suite, to great success (in my opinion at least).

One theme in all these rewrites has been the inclusion of other pieces of software. Gecko (khtml) has been critical to providing a new suite of tools simply by making it possible to pay attention to other aspects of the applications. Likewise, OS X utilizing FreeBSD was not necessarily innovative, but rather an effective means of raising the level of abstraction.

Like programming languages, abstracting away low level detail enables thinking at a level closer to how people think. In programming, this allows programmers to reduce the complexity. When you can safely say "x = 5" without having to think about memory management or the scope of the variable, you create space in your available mind for other details. In the same way, introducing a well established library or piece of code can help take an application to the next level by moving the innovations closer to the user.

Going back to Microsoft, I wonder why they have not really made efforts to capitalise on these kind of changes in the software landscape. I'm sure lawyers would be involved in the equation, but as a participant in the software landscape, it is clear it hurts users. It is always difficult to standardise on things as competition and differences are where innovation occurs, but just like programming languages, when there is a low level standard to build on, using something else just adds complexity.

I think the time to start over is never clear. One sign that it might be worth it though is a low level library or system that might free up your resources for features closer to the user. At the end of the day software is there for people to use, so anything you can do to improve the experience for the person using is worth more than keeping a code base out of convenience.