Genii Weblog

From change to consistency

Tue 7 Mar 2006, 06:28 PM



by Ben Langhinrichs
It struck me today that I spent a number of years in my professional life trying to make a difference.  Not so much a difference as in saving the world, but a difference as in writing code that would stand out, that would change, that would look appealing, or at the very least would allow others to make things stand out, change, and look appealing.  Even my first "break out" product, the Midas Rich Text LSX, was originally conceived as a way to change rich text in wild and wonderful ways.  I hope I can safely say that it has done that.

But evolving tactics has left me with a funny set of goals recently, somehow consistent with my own aging (OK, I'm only 43, but I'm certainly not 25 anymore).  Now, the lion's share of my effort is in making things not change.  Whether through products, including Midas, or through help I give people, I find a lot of what I talk about is how to make rich text still look the same in HTML, or functionality to still work the same on the Web as it did in Notes, or to make MIME look and work the same both coming and going, or to make doclinks keep working the same way they did before after getting sent to a different mail system.  I guess it is part and parcel of the coexistence kick I am on lately, but it seems ironic when I can cheer because a particularly gnarly bit of rich text can be converted to MIME and converted back and still look the same.  It just shouldn't be so darn pleasing to have something look just the way it did before.

And not only is it my passion and day to day job, other people are willing to pay for it as well.  Go figure!

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