A FABLE

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a factory. It was an efficient and successful place where many talented men and women labored long hours to produce something called "softwares" . . .whatever they were. The factory made a lot of money for its owners and the laborers there, called "developers" or "geeks", prospered, though they worked exceedingly hard and long.

The way softwares were made was quite complex and laborious. The developers gathered raw material into blocks which were all unique and stored them on thousands of named shelves. Then they selected some of the blocks and carried them to special parts of the factory called "build areas" and piled them into vast and complex arrangements using old and dusty little books with much crabbed writing called "makefiles". Many times the blocks one developer placed would cover up or knock down other developers' blocks, causing much confusion, fighting and wasted time. The developers also spent long hours scratching out and scribbling in the makefiles and moving the blocks around to make ever more beautiful, complex and precariously balanced softwares. Some developers just ran around with flyswatters and flailed endlessly at "bugs" (which liked to make these structures their home) often knocking down whole portions of the softwares with their mis-aimed swats. Very few of the softwares ever made it out the door, but those that did were prized throughout the kingdom.

The developers' lives would have been hopelessly chaotic and futile if it weren't for some tools, invented back in the misty past by the prophets and forefathers of the factory folk. These tools were freely available to everyone, easy to use and hopelessly primitive. They consisted mainly of leather slings and backpacks to carry blocks around, special shelves with cryptic names like "1.1.2.2.1" to store special blocks and turnstiles for the developers to pass through which were supposed to make sure that only the right blocks were used. The turnstiles were laughingly easy to get around, however, and the special shelves didn't help people much in remembering which blocks went where. And it seemed that the backpacks and slings just increased the sheer volume of blocks that developers had to carry around all day. But the people all agreed that without these tools, called "rcs" and "sccs" (pronounced "rocks" and "sucks"), their lives would be horribly painful, instead of just kind of painful.

Over all this work hovered the most hated of overseers, the "configuration managers" who swore and complained and ran frantically through the factory pulling a block-toting developer this way and pushing another that. Their main function in life seemed to be to prevent softwares from ever being built. The fact that only a few of these folk were murdered a year was considered a miracle.

On occassion, travelling wizards stopped by waving new and shiny tools that they promised would change the developers' lives for the better. One after another they offered them to the reaching throng of developers who happily ran off to try them.

Alas, after some days of trying to use the new tools the developers were more frustrated and tired than ever. One, called a "softool" (and it was peculiarly flaccid), was a huge vault in which to store their blocks, with complex and exceedingly slow-moving conveyor-belts with which to move the blocks. This one people refused to use almost immediately. Another, inexplicably called an "aide-de-camp", made them keep all their blocks in another type of vault that changed the blocks' names and assembled them into odd and mostly useless combinations. One that was quite attractive and had the catchy name of a "teamone" would appear to be doing a reasonable job of collecting and moving blocks, but often would throw the blocks down the storm drains without warning. It also was very stubborn and inflexible about which blocks could be assembled with certain others.

The biggest and most impressive tool of them all turned out to be the biggest disappointment too. The "Amplified & Controlled Caseware CM" was touted by the wizard as being the most potent creation of the renowned "elves of Irvine". It certainly was big and had a beautifully painted exterior with lots and lots of windows. And the wizard assured them it would help them make the "paradigm shift"-- whatever that was. However, when the people tried to use it, they were frustrated by swarms of little men calling themselves "consultants" who got in their way and kept asking for spare change. Worst of all, when they tried to use their makefiles, the little men told them they had to use something called a "gooey base building tool" instead and dragged out cages of mice which they handed out to everyone. Well, it was a disaster. Reluctantly the people went back to their slings and shelves and drudgery.

One day, an itinerant peddler knocked on the factory door and called out, "What's it going to be today?" He waved his hand at a very complex and forbidding-looking machine he called a "clearcase", though it wasn't very clear and didn't appear to be any sort of case at all. The people reluctantly dragged it into the factory and flipped its switch. After droning "setview, setview" a few times it started humming loudly. It started cataloging and sorting and piling the blocks almost like magic. It occassionally would grumble and hiss and spit out maniacal rantings like :

When it did this, the people would stop and cower and finger their protective amulets, but the peddler would just laugh and say "just call support!"

Over time, the people kind of got to like the clearcase and the factory was nearly unrecognizable. Conveyor belts went in every direction carrying blocks to the build area. The builds were accomplished with more speed and efficiency while the developers sat in barcaloungers, ate Fritos, sipped diet cokes and leisurely swatted the occasional bug that skittered by. Huge and magnificent softwares came lumbering out to the receiving dock to be carted away. People were seen walking about in marvelous lines and formations like a college marching band, something they called "parallel development" which everyone swore they couldn't do before the clearcase arrived (though why anyone cared, no one knew).

Happiest of all were the configuration managers, that formerly hated oppressive class. They now dithered ecstatically in the control cab of the clearcase, pulling on triggers, hooking hyperlinks together, comparing attributes and waving about long papers they called "configrecs". This kept them out of the developers' way nearly all of the time . . . which was probably the happiest ending of all.