The Curse of Xanadu

I found an old article about a failed (or not yet successful) product called Xanadu. Xanadu is a hypertext system for publishing and linking documents and information. Sound familiar? No, its not the next hot web app. According to its creators, its what the Web should have been or what will make the Web obsolete. This system was conceived in the Sixties - long before the Web. According to Xanadu, the Web doesn't even come close to their product. It's inferior in every way and is basically just paper 2.0. So, why aren't we all using Xanadu instead of the Web? What are some of the things we can learn from Xanadu.

1. It was too revolutionary. But isn't being revolutionary a good thing in software? Yes, but with science and technology being too revolutionary can make you and your goals unapproachable. Let's face it. People don't really like their world being turned completely upside-down. We'd prefer that it just tilt a little bit every once in a while. Anything more upsets our stomachs. And when your ideas are too far ahead of what's technologically available at the time, you have to build everything for yourself from scratch. The existing technology gives you almost nothing to build off of. Just think if someone had conceived of a modern car with an internal combustion engine within a completely agricultural society with no conception of even basic metal working.
   
2. Perfectionism. This is a typical vice in software. Many people fail to understand the benefits of building and releasing a system with only a fraction of the conceived features. Projects attempt to build all of the proposed features to perfection before allowing customers to have anything. This causes problems. First, it robs the creators of valuable feedback from customers as they develop further features and hone existing ones. Second, it increases the chance that someone else will get to the customers first and win their loyalty before they've even seen your project. And last, it means you will never complete your project because it will never be perfect.
   

The Web might be just like paper to the makers of Xanadu. But it's made everyone feel as though they've been through a major revolution. And it may have a lot of flaws, but I can use it and it gives me a lot of what I need - now.

I'm not looking for mediocrity. The goal is to create tools that will be useful to people. If they can't imagine or understand them, then the tools will never be useful. If you are unable to allow yourself to give people tools that do some things well (rather than all things perfectly), they'll never see your project.