Steve Jones - Editor (12/7/2009)
Is a hot dog cooker inefficient? Having one means that my kid might be able to cook something without help. It might seem like a waste to a chef, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. Don't chefs have multiple knives for different purposes, each being a separate "app" for a separate purpose?You can take it too far, and I might agree that a hot dog cooker is a little specialized, but not necessarily. It could fit the situation.
To take this specific example: the hot dog cooker isn't necessarily inefficient for the specific purpose at hand, but - it probably represents an inefficient use of space. This would have to live on the counter somewhere, be plugged into an outlet (taking that outlet out of circulation), another manual to read, another warrantly to keep up to date, etc... So - you could make a choice to put one or two of these "single use" items on your kitchen counter, but I doubt you'd have the space for the 200+ specific cookers you would need to deal with every single specialized cooking option.
The same with our application: the right approach is to find the "high-value targets" for single use apps which give you the best output, and then rely on multi-purpose apps to deal with a lot of the other scenarios. The integration complexities alone grow exponentially as you add in more "moving parts".
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?