Genesis 2.0 – how IT all began

This is one of my short stories originally published in CIO Sweden.

I've made it shorter and did my best to translate it from Swedish to English (bare with me, English is not my mother tongue)

The short story can be used in Organizational Storytelling to give a perspective on the sometimes present attitude in Software Engineering and Usability - "ooops, is there supposed to be user in the end?"

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Genesis 2.0
And it happened at that time that our Creator was in the garden. There he planted variables, constants, statements and operators –all kinds of components grew there.

There were classes, objects, methods and primitives who spread all around. Compilers flourished together with virtual machines, operating systems and a large and unwieldy exception.

The Creator was happy and decided to leave the garden. Before he left, he gathered all components and told tem: “Make sure you live in peace and harmony with one another.”
All components nodded and promised to do so.

But it did not take long until:
The compiler accused the object to have no class
The operating system thought the primitive was a real type
The primitive got strung out
The virtual machine made the class disinherited

Eventually all components were in a fight. The creator heard the noise and came back. He talked with each one and tried to sort things out.

He gathered them all and said: “Since you can not live together in peace and harmony of your own, I must help you. I have decided to compile you all in one big family. I will call that family Software.”

He took an object and put in the variables, constants, statements and operators and compiled them to executable code. As he run the Software a beautiful user interface was exposed.

"Hm…“, the Creator said. "Everything is fine, but something’s missing. You need a task. A joint project. Something that motivates you every day. "

"I know. You will process information.”

The Software was launched. The objects were initiated and awoke to life, functions rattled through the logic and processed information forth and back through the architecture. From client to integration, database and back. It became a lifestyle. And if a small part of the Software did not feel good, it initiated a large and unwieldy exception so everyone got time to recover.

The Creator was happy again – this Software was a good idea. He decided to make even more. To obtain variation he also created Software in different languages, platforms and standards.

Finally, the Creator created the User and placed her in front of the Software.

“Now I hope”, said the Creator.

“In the same way as the Software work for a common goal, all Users will work together with the Software, with peace and harmony as their goal.”