Good Paths

I've been reading Marco Polo lately ... and of course the first thing that strikes a modern person about this book, is that the world is described as paths: from place-to-place, from city-to-city.

The modern world, with its boundaries and territories, is quite unnatural, and the source of great misery. We might consider a change in perspective.

If you follow your cat around sometime, on her policeman-like rounds in the backyard, you'll see that she goes from place-to-place, along a particular route, between objects, rubbing each one. She is Marco Polo.

These are well-worn paths. They are also good paths. There are other good paths, certainly, but there are far more bad paths than good ones.

So this prompts a question for programmers and other engineers: where are the well-worn paths? Why are they not described anywhere? Are we so busy creating products, that we cannot describe, to those who follow us, how and why we did what we did?

This is part of my motivation for core memory.