When a software system is developed and a large amount of data is involved there has to be a way to break it all out, and make sense of the data. Relating data to different subjects and people and chronologically. Essentially, it all comes down to metadeta. Doesn't everything?* At least it does when you're a software developer who's passionate about organising data, relations and making sense of it all for the user.

I was sitting in work, looking at some code and I switched to iTunes to get some coding music on, and as always I looked for an opportunity to be distracted. I noticed that there were way too many genres in my music library.

It's an entire column in iTunes that I never use (I think it can be hidden, but thats erroneous) . That's one third of the browse bar thats never touched. After this revelation, I started to organise my music into genres. It's more difficult than I thought. Which genre should CSS go in? Pop? Rock? Indie? Soft Rock? And what the hell is soft rock? Is that even a genre? What's alternative? Alternative to what? I kind of guess Alternative Rock is Rock, but different. Isn't that what all bands are trying to achieve? Something the same, but different, something ... alternative.

So the question I ask is should music span more than 1 genre, should it be based on the general feel of the album, or on a specific song? Can a band cross genres between albums/songs?

I'm trying to conclude this post, but can't. Seems that a single album with many genres might give the user too much freedom, it could be dangerous. Constraints are good.

Lesson: Even if you can't figure out why something is built a certain way, there is usually a damn good reason for it, and someone has already sweat over it for a lengthy period before you thought of it.

Conclusion: To bring this back to software development - Just because a user requests a change to a piece of software, doesn't make it a viable reason to make the change. Most users don't know what they are asking for and can't see the long term effects. This is how software becomes bloated, the developer tries to please everyone. Further reading.

* Kind of like the matrix, but the CG isn't as good.