Bespoke is better
Time to read
, 345 words, 5th grade
There is nothing wrong with commodity code.
After all, food is a commodity. We need mass production to have enough to feed everyone in a modern civilization. Especially when most live in urban areas.
Mass production also frees up time for humans to pursue other activities. Like Craft Coding!
Planting your own small garden is time consuming. But it can also be quite rewarding. That said, do you want to run your own mill, bakery, roastery, and brewery as well? Does anyone have time to do all that?
So we need both commodity and bespoke efforts, each in their place. One is not better or worse than the other: they serve different needs.
Commodities allow us to meet our needs so well that we can afford to go bespoke where it means the most to us.
That said, the assembly line has led as well to some significant negatives. French theorist Paul Virilio talks about the integral accident. He asserts that every new technology has unforeseen consequences. Virilio writes:
When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck … Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.
When we invented the assembly line, we invented the consumer society. And conspicuous consumption and waste. And the extreme overproduction of all sorts of unnecessary goods. And all to the great detriment of life on Earth.
In essence, we threw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. It didnʼt have to be that way.
Craft Code attempts to restore some balance to our world. Some sanity. Starting with our ubiquitous software.
Because some things are worth the effort.
And the greater the effort then the more that we value the product of that effort. Presuming, of course, that this effort also yields remarkable results.
In short, Craft Code is an effort to slow things down a bit. To re-instill meaning into a world that has become ersatz, hackneyed, and hollow. Bespoke, in its proper place, truly is better.