Nigel McFarlane

The Neurotic Weight of Coping

Written by admin on May 5, 2009

Rough treatment of standards is at odds with the absolutism of software logic. It is simple to create a tiny symbolic system inside whose confines a person can play. A Bookmark Manager is an example. But such a tiny system is not true flexibility, it merely allows a microcosm of restricted choices.

The problem of rule-breaking flexibility can only be pushed one of two ways: either the user carries the neurotic load of staying inflexibly restricted within the software’s built parameters, or the software carries the neurotic load of attempting to survive unexpected treatment that the user might visit on it. The former case may result in beautifully clean software design, but the latter case most certainly will not. Nevertheless, if people’s creativity and expression are to be supported as well as they might, the latter case, which is the status quo for the example of older HTML, is preferable.

This is no doubt a burden for those that must maintain such software, but better a burden on the willing few (or at least on the capable few) than on the unwilling majority.