Young programmers should take up enterprise software

That was an article full of derision (Scripting language derision, young 20 somethings know nothing by gabbing on facebook and posting the pictures) for no good reason.

It hasn't given a good positive reason to learn the enterprise side of things at all.

I'm not convinced that being enterprise-y is necessary. Certainly there are a lot of enterprise-y solutions out there, but I'm not convinced that was the only way to do it... Or even the best way.

It seems to me that the best things have come from making really, really solid small components, and then combining them into larger things. Simply creating a large thing without spending time on the individual pieces of it makes a really shaky system.

When you do things the enterprise way, it almost guarantees there are pieces that get next to zero attention. Bigger things also require more management, and management doesn't actually add value to the product directly.

wccrawford who says that enterprise=big? Yes, that's the old way of doing things but I am with you (and Matt): we need to have small, to the point solutions to solve enterprise problems.

jmgtan rightfully points out that the companies to deliver these innovative small enterprise solutions may be small themselves (so there is no red tape to hinder creativity).

He who succeeds can make a big impact: very many happy enterprise customers (and riches in the process). Question remains: why is this not interesting to many young engineers?

Having worked in an enterprise company for a few years, and while there are some interesting problems to solve, the amount of politics and red tape that you have to go through before you even get to write a single code is a big hindrance to creativity.

Two problems are the amount of boilerplate customization and wine&dining by high-cost sales guys to get deals. Both are not very startup-esque and leave a dirty feeling.