Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips.
There are a lot of standards today guiding our behavior. There seem to be a lot of people today who ignore the standards and yet they succeed.
It is illegal in many places to talk on a cell phone while driving. It is illegal in many places to send text messages while driving. It is illegal in many places to be using a laptop computer while driving.
For as long as I have been driving, [1] a person could receive a fine for
Failure to Maintain Control of Your Vehicle
It seems that all these new laws for new, sometimes distracting technologies are quite unnecessary. If you cannot text and drive at the same time, you will fail to maintain control of your vehicle and be guilty of [1]. It seems that [1] would be penalty enough for drivers.
I guess we have to add laws, penalties, regulations, and such onto the ones we already have that already cover the same things. Perhaps this is a general human tendency. We want to be sure that we are sure of what requires sure-ness, so we add just a little more oversight, punishment, and whatever.
I work in computers and software. Way back when, you tried to do your best so that you and your organization would succeed. There were tips and techniques for doing a good job, and guys like me studied these things and applied as best we good. The motivation was simple – I wanted to do well.
Now there are lots of standards that require adherence. If you don’t use the standards and swear that you use them, your software won’t be accepted or certified or blessed or approved by the groups of people that write the standards. You may be shunned.
I don’t believe that Google and Yahoo and Apple and well, let’s provide a long list of groups that write software and seem to be succeeding wildly. Still, without adhering to all these standards, the world works just fine using their software.
I guess Google and Yahoo and Apple and their ilk simply maintain control of their vehicle.