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Knowing how much to invest today in maintainability, extensibility, serviceability, and fire-proofing for tomorrow is one of the key tests of judgment for CxO’s responsible for technology development and each new generation of business leaders has to learn the same lessons – usually the hard way. It’s surprising how often we are deluded into thinking that because enabling technology has increased the power and reach of our applications, we can somehow take shortcuts on how we build systems and still expect to avoid the pitfalls that still hold the remains of the previous generations’ failures. But the opposite extreme also fails – spending so long setting up processes and infrastructure designed to avoid pitfalls that your system never sees the light of day.

Reflecting on our industry’s short but dense history is a worthwhile activity; it helps bring the forest back into focus, and the paths often emerge more clearly.