Final Versions

“Nobody knows that the final version of aircraft will be. It may have no wings; it may be round and flat and saucer-shaped; it may be powered by new chemical fuels or by the atom.”

From Men of Science and Invention, 1960, a weathered children’s book I picked up at the recycling center. The final version of an aircraft? An interesting thought, I had never considered the possibility of a perfect, un-improvable object. Something antithetical to capitalism and Kaizen. And a metaphor for software development: today’s perfect code is the impetus for tomorrow’s perfect code.