More on ancient engineering

Good to see that I’m not the only blogger slacking off by taking European vacations these days, and trying to compensate by blogging about ancient engineering feats: John Reynolds ponders Pisa’s leaning tower by exploring the bond between Renaissance engineers and all of us implementing IT systems these days:

  • Renaissance engineers were asked (or forced) to build on foundations that they knew were flawed
  • Renaissance engineers had to deal with “legacy systems”
  • Renaissance engineers had to implement “quick-fixes” that made the original problem worse
  • Renaissance engineers had to expend great effort over many years to patch and maintain defective projects (instead of starting over)

He echoes my sentiment somewhat by hoping that something of his will become as significant as Pisa’s tower someday.

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