Hardware may be like produce, most desirable when it’s fresh and gradually declining in appeal as it gets older, but software is like cheese.

At first cheese is really just spoiled milk; it has potential, but it’s not very desirable. Gradually, cheese ages and matures until it reaches a peak of flavor and texture. Eventually, the cheese spoils and you need to throw it out and start over.

Software — great software that runs our lives in banking and communication and industrial automation — is not very good when it’s “fresh.” But it matures as it is refined and refactored, bugs being worked out over time, until it reaches a peak of usability and stability. In the end, it no longer suits its users, or it succumbs to bit rot and neglect.

I am tempted to take this analogy too far — Is Windows more like American Processed Cheese Food or a nice aged Asiago? — but I’ll leave it here for now.