I was lurking in my Google Reader the other day checking the news and I noticed a story about the Windows Vista release date slipping again. Now when given the choice, I tend to reach for Ubuntu Linux, so this news doesn’t bother me. What interested me is the reason, the fact is that Windows has grown so big and complex that it’s giving Microsoft real headaches.
From a Taoist viewpoint, this sort of monolithic complexity is a real no-no. Far better, the more modular Unix and GNU/Linux approach, with a collection of small programs that each do one job and do it well. Small programs can have functionality added quickly and improvements and fixes will help everything that depends on them.
This is a much better approach than trying to create a huge monolith. Firstly, bits can be added or removed to tailor the system to a specific task, secondly new functionality can be easily built on top of the standard tools, anyone who’s tried their hand BASH scripting can testify to this.
But a Linux install can take hundreds of Megabytes or more, isn’t that a monolith? No, each component comes from a different development team, and they are drawn together into a cohesive distribution.
This model isn’t a lumbering monolith, it’s a collection of smaller more agile units working together, I think a good word is “swarm”.
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