Anyone who has been in this business for any length of time will look back at a long legacy of retired, obsolete projects. Very little in this space lasts. The high profile, long lived projects we see are just an tiny fraction of the software that's created, used, forgotten, and deleted.

I like to look back and note some of the companies I helped in that little window of time I could contribute, but those contributions are long gone.

We don't build bridges in this business, thats for sure.

I have friends who ask me how to set their kids on a path to a tech career like mine. I tell them they may not want that at all. This is a good job, today. But I don't think it is so different from building pickup trucks in Detroit in the 1960s. Nothing lasts forever. Including those trucks, and those jobs. We can't know the future, only that change is inevitable.

Software Manufacturing is a term that best captures my impression of the industry today.