Professional IT

It was with great sadness that I read this article in the BBC British teenage designer of Summly hits jackpot.  This was not sadness for this young coder, I am pleased that he has had success with his application and hope that his skills go on to benefit our industry.  My sadness was because since the 1980's our industry has struggled to live down the teenager in a garage writing computer games.

This era lead to the Non IT trained upper management having very unreal expectations of the requirements of a properly designed program.  After all if a teenager in his bedroom can make something successful imagine how easily a room full of trained professionals can achieve....  This in turn lead to a perception that young people are more in touch with computers that has also delivered an unwelcome ageism to the industry.

The increasing complexity of computer games moved them to a point where working alone anywhere you simply could not compete with a professional game producer.  The increasingly complex graphics and crafted game play meant that few people would have all the skills necessary to create such a game, however long they took.  Not only that the industry moved so quickly that if they did not deliver a game in a timely fashion it was outdated and unwanted when it was finally ready.

Now along come apps and the news companies have dragged out the myth for another airing.  The truth is that on device single purpose Apps are not that hard to create.  The kind of application integrated into other business systems that must be stable and secure are quite another matter.  These will require careful design and time and effort and it makes me sad to think that our diligent work will be met with "but if a teenage can write this in his bedroom why are you taking so long".