These days, we don’t expect software to last for 50 years. We have seen over the past two decades just how difficult it is to predict the progress of technology. But back in 1958, people expected software – and everything else for that matter – to last a lot longer than we do today.
We no longer buy clothes that we expect to hand down to our children. Instead we buy affordable, dispensable items that are fashionable this season, knowing they probably won’t be trendy next year. And often we treat software the same way.