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This is a lovely article. Software is a possibly a) errant and b) misinterpreted operational semantics of some other semantic horizons of contractual or implicit expectations. Knuth's Literate Programming was onto something. We inhabit a world of word problems and even faulty realizations of rarer formal specifications. Claims concerning "phenomena in the world" drive maintenance and enhancement regimens.

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Worse still, most of us walk around under the delusion that we know what we want while others can see it doesn’t make us happy.

How do you get the product you want when you don’t know what you want?

The hard part is reaching a committed niche in the user base, whether paying customer or audience kinds. Software tools generalize from and for niche sponsors with more specific needs. Software growth is then the "consensual delusion" of feature set and paying constituency accretion. Platform heterogeneity "churn" offers both big risks and big opportunities. Never a dull moment in software development.

Just buy Apple. They know what you want.

You may be joking, but I think the way in which this is true explains Apple’s success, even though they’ve generally released products that are less featureful and significantly more expensive than their competition.

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