So in my last post (the “AO3’s birthday” reblog) I made the usual joke about how AO3 has been saying it’s in “beta” for longer than any other website or software I can think of.

ALT

And I have come to the conclusion that, even though we think of a “beta” as an immature program–

–in the case of AO3, this claim honestly seems to me like a sign of maturity.

As I understand it, the beta stage is when the most development happens in the life of a programmed work. Bug fixes, fine-tuning every function to make sure it’s good enough to do its job– all this happens frequently during a beta run, and then slows down as there get to be fewer things that need changing.

But it never stops completely. Even the best-optimized website or program will need updates now and then, to adapt to a changing world.

It’s kinda like how the most growth and change, in a human body and mind and personality, will occur in the first couple decades of life… but the human is still capable of change after that, and will still need to keep changing.

There’s an unfortunate tendency for humans to defy this wisdom in two different directions:

1. by talking as if there’s an unrealistically hard line between “the time when your mind is still growing” and “the time when it’s fully developed”

2. and by living an adulthood of being either… dangerously resistant to progressive changes in thinking, or dangerously susceptible to harmful changes in thinking, or both.

And I think the same is true of software.

Can’t count how many times I’ve seen a website or program claim it’s fully developed, all ready to start being used and generating profit… but then spend the rest of its existence just constantly being overhauled. Making all the changes nobody wants– and yet none of the changes we do want.

This is the analogy I see.

In a world of adults who insist that they’re fully developed because their brains stopped growing at age 25…

and who express this through sheer stick-in-the-mud unwillingness to accept anything new, except when they go terrifyingly off the rails for conspiracy theories they saw on Facebook…

…AO3 is the one adult who has just kept steadily making small, sensible changes over the years– and, at the same time, acknowledges that there is no age when their brain will fully stop developing.

Now that’s maturity.

Happy birthday, again.