''Two characteristics for simple, successful components '' ThinkingOutLoud.DonaldNoyes.20110422
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The wiki concept owes much of its success to factors of Flesibility and Reusability. Add to that the simplicity of its construction and its use. No steep learning curve here. It is Web Collaboration at its simplest and universally understandable form. Type it in, press the save button and it is done! Navigation is also simplified by the blue-underlined text. 

There is a rule that successful things are "easy to use" and flexible in their nature. Make your own list of successes and you will find that FlexibleReusable will be included as one of the primary reasons. 

If a person desires success in an endeavor, this principle should be kept constantly in mind. Add to that the importance of timeliness. Many good ideas and productions have been put forward that one would expect to be successful because of value and usefulness, are not because they have been put forward before people were ready to use them, or have been superceded  before introduced by other more fitting or usable vehicles. 

Other things in addition to flexiblility, reusability, simplicity, timeliness which are essential to widespread success, is the ease of deployment, the strength and extent of supporting infrastructure, its cost, and its maintainability. While this is not always true, the good is often very quickly replaced by the better because given all the factors of use, it is the best for the moment. VHS succeeded over Betamax as a portable compact recording media, but both have been replaced by the optical disc, whether you call it CDR, DVD, Blue-ray, and regardless of its diameter and thickness. 

It seems that some ideas and products that are successful do not rely on structural characteristics of flexibility and reusability for reasons of urgency. I fear software is one such idea. the rapidity of obsolescence of languages, operating systems, and hardware have made software vulnerable to violent compromise. I feel that the more like spoken language you can make  a software language, the longer it will survive.

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CategorySuccess