Zawinski's Law: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.
This law explains why:
- Text editors become IDEs
- Build tools become deployment platforms
- Chat apps become workflow management systems
- Simple utilities become Swiss Army knives
The pattern is feature creep driven by user requests and competitive pressure. The challenge is knowing when to say no to expansion.
Oh and I forgot to include the kicker.
Zawinski also added in 2020, "Apps that you 'live in' all day have pressure to become everything and do everything. An app for editing text becomes an IDE, then an OS."
And it's not purely from users. It's also driven by the corporations that own these tools.
@raiderrobert As a corporate software developer, I had 3 apps open all day - a Chrome browser, Slack (also a Chromium browser) and VS Code (also a Chromium browser). Chromium can be an operating system (if you include a kernel), i.e. ChromeOS.
This kitchen-sink approach is kinda universal, not just in corporate applications. GNU Emacs is supposed to be a text editor, that eventually became an operating system (again, kernel not included), not guided by any corporate interests, unlike Chromium.
@raiderrobert all of this. and then some how now signal is the stream of consciousness like how does one keep up?
What ever happened to BBS and forums with long and in depth comprehensive knowledge.
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