> (Small groups of programmers and engineers routinely revolutionize sectors of technology, without being especially fanatical.)
In my opinion, that's because of the current state of software as a field. In the future, as the field grows and the distance between subfields grows, it's going to be more and more difficult to get stuff done.
You could argue that abstraction will offset this difference, but I doubt that, as you generally need people who are invested in those layers of abstraction to fix bugs. Occasional bugs will be fixable by the small team, but already we're outsourcing Big Bugs to other, more specialized teams, even if we don't realize that it is so (Usage of libraries is just outsourcing work to other 'research teams'). But then I guess the question is that if a bug fix for team X utilizes seven different teams that are unconnected to the project worked on by team X, then does it still count as a 'small group', at what point do you account for the critical-yet-unconnected effort of other teams?
> (Small groups of programmers and engineers routinely revolutionize sectors of technology, without being especially fanatical.)
In my opinion, that's because of the current state of software as a field. In the future, as the field grows and the distance between subfields grows, it's going to be more and more difficult to get stuff done.
You could argue that abstraction will offset this difference, but I doubt that, as you generally need people who are invested in those layers of abstraction to fix bugs. Occasional bugs will be fixable by the small team, but already we're outsourcing Big Bugs to other, more specialized teams, even if we don't realize that it is so (Usage of libraries is just outsourcing work to other 'research teams'). But then I guess the question is that if a bug fix for team X utilizes seven different teams that are unconnected to the project worked on by team X, then does it still count as a 'small group', at what point do you account for the critical-yet-unconnected effort of other teams?