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Is Software Folk Art?

Just got back from a trip to the northern California Coast area, Guerneville to be exact, and ran into some folk art (on purpose) by the artist of Partick Amiot in Sebastopal.  This is one of his pieces on the right.  Very cool to see out in a yard.  I then ran into another piece of somewhat practical (unintentional) folk art on a walk (see below).  What a hoot to see something that was created for a practical purpose (lighting and holding up the mail box), but could also be placed as folk art.  This made my day.  I was just imagining what the owner was thinking when they put this together.

Seeing this I of course got thinking if this somehow equates to software and it's development.

OK, lets compare the creation of folk art and software.
  • If you have two different software groups create an application with only vague design or requirements, how different would the resulting applications be?
  • How much of of the developers personality and perceptions be projected into the code, language, operation, UI, features, stability, etc?
  • How maintainable would the code be?  (Seeing as most of a projects life is spent in maintaining, would this be a concern?)
  • Would the different teams refer to their work as "Engineering" and how would they justify this?
  • At the completion of the applications (or after a set period of time), what would prospective buyers (customers) pay for the applications and what would their comments be?  
  • How do you build a business on developing software like this? and getting customers to pay big money for it?
I love folk art.  I get a different view of the world and my take on it. I even like Folk software development once in a while and the freedom and creativity it brings.

However there is the time and place for folk art and not every business can support it.  For the times when detail designs, requirements, timetables and expected results must be attained, folk software development may not be the best choice.

But the world needs both. 

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