IT Musings

This week has started off with a discussion about why IT organizations don't go out and create their own Open Source applications to meet needs. For some reason the discussion made me think of a quote I heard attributed to Alan Moore about Superman and Batman.

"As long as his parents are still dead, Batman has lost. As long as the planet hasn't exploded, Superman is ahead of the game."

In a company, IT is usually Batman. The big grim guy who comes in to fix the server, and tell you have to have 1 uppercase letter and 2 special characters in your password. IT people usually have to go and fight pernicious programs, bad routers, or whatever else comes into the ticket queue.. and rarely does one get thanks.. more like "Hey how did you let that happen in the first place.".

On the other hand, Development is usually Superman. Their project can be axed, and they will just go find another company to do it one more time. Heck they might just do it in their spare time just to show it could have been done.

Ok I am not saying all developers are like that, but even the most morose seems to go at things from a "Well heck, didn't explode the planet with that core dump.. lets just fix it up and see what happens next." A system administrator is going to make sure that he has 3 backup plans in case a velociraptor shows up in the middle with a fight a tape drive.