Trey Ratcliff hacks out nature and photo tech with his HDR magic
Early adopting members of the tech savy crowd experience the boon and bane of raw and unpolished software architectures. It feels like everyday a new niche microblogging site with a different feature set sprouts up to fill a perceived demand from it's designers. One of the striking similarities is the repurposing of existing open source utilities but with a novel arrangement and usually a leaner focus.
What is apparent from a user and developer point of view is that earlier designs which ease entry plus pack a rich feature set under the hood are reused and extended. I see these extensions as overlapping echoes of earlier work. Use and reuse at the designers option are an advanced "voting algorithm" which reinforces best of breed technology.
Code Reuse Mimicks Music Production
Not long ago I called attention to Jim Pavloff's recreation of the popular song Smack My Bitch Up by The Prodigy. This is a perfect example of decompiling the digital essence of a song, and understanding the echoes of earlier art. Each modern code hack which integrates existing software mirrors modern music production. The designer and producer share the role of creative remixer of legacy patterns. The music producer hears the melody, beats and rhythm in their mind and experiments with sounds to mimick that flow. The software designer imagines an interface and user interaction flow and experiments with utility combinations to implement their vision.
I invite you to extend or refute this analogy.