Or perhaps it was because there was no layer between those developers and the users, no translations, no requirements gathering, no cards. Just you standing at the desk of the customer service rep, asking them how you could make their life better.

I do miss that often, too. We have so many applications and services in use with shitty bugs, which could probably be fixed in a few days. Of course, all those are proprietary shovelware that I’m not allowed to fix anyways, but the thought remains.

Instead, we just repeatedly spend years building up intricate systems only for them to get cancelled for no good reason, right when they’re about to become useful.

This may sound like a mess to you. But it was remarkably enjoyable to work in. Gone were the concerns of code duplication. Gone were the concerns of consistency. Gone were the concerns of extensibility. Code was written to serve a use, to touch as little of the area around it as possible, and to be easily replaceable. Our code was decoupled, because coupling it was simply harder.

Incredible

“Gilfoyle” is an anagram of Cthulu.

My god, this speaks to me.