Don't Mess With a Good Thing

Or how software's dream is to never change

Hey friends,

I think of this small community often as I make small updates and fixes to our “digital dead man’s switch” (if you will) and most of these changes are extremely minor, like updating the small on-hover animation in the global header:

Yes, it was working fine but it wasn’t perfect and so a little change to the CSS, a review of the internal divs and we’ve got a much nicer and cleaner implementation. I even made the intentional decision to keep the green “indicator” light inside of the black outline to ensure a cleanliness throughout — just enough to know that you’re alive but not enough to break design.

And that’s kind of the point.

When we finished version 1.0 of the platform it was done, complete, finished. It had everything it needed and nothing more to create a solid foundation of functionality. Folks can sign-up easily and then create a death note and then add someone to be a recipient. Done and done.

Built on world class infrastructure, I built it in such a way where it could be handed off to my kids if I wanted — hopefully 30 or 40 years from now — exactly as it’s built today. You see, great software’s desire is to become “hardware” or technology that doesn’t have to change.

If you keep touching it, especially in fundamental ways, it means you haven’t quite built the underlying systems that really solve your customers problems. We built a system that lasts and calcifying software that works is the goal.

If you keep messing with a good thing then it’ll become bad. Or, it was never really good to begin with.

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