Paul Moser

Me: So much to learn but so little time.

Andy: But wouldn’t it be so much worse if there was time and there was now nothing left to learn

They may have been his own words, or he may have been quoting someone else but in the absence of any evidence to the contrary (a quick Google search) I’ll give Andy Settle the credit.

I was reminded of this little gem by a conversation with colleagues the other night in the pub where there was a regular expressions book lying around and I commented that sometime I really should get around to learning regular expressions properly (I can do basic ones with the help of a reference page and know the right people to ask for more complicated cases). A colleague then quoted my blog tag line to me, which was a little spooky as the above quote was from the end of a conversation where Andy (one of those ‘right people’) helped me out with a regular expression.

As a comment to a 37Signals post “Predicting ‘06: Enterprise is the new legacy” (probably more on that at some later date) Chad Fowler made the very good observation:

Careful. “Legacy” isn’t a bad word. “Legacy” usually means tried, true, and of enough value that it lasted long enough to be old and outdated.

To mock “Legacy” is to look at the successes of the past and to declare that they aren’t to be revered or respected. Most of what runs our economies is “Legacy”.

In the future, I hope that the software I’m creating now was highly regarded enough that it’s still around and being referred to as “Legacy”.