Self-Renewing Applications

Software practice has suffered from and continues to suffer from many shortcomings as a result. Programs are difficult to design and build; they often fail to satisfy user requirements. If they work adequately at all, it´s more often due to users adapting to the program than the program meeting users´ requirements. The thesis of this column is that software engineering would be well served if we began to think of application-as-use as primary. In particular, if we could develop user interactions correctly, the application-as-use of a software artifact would help renew that artifact.