We have many names to describe personal tools. Malleable software speaks to how it behaves. Home-cooked software speaks to who makes it. I wanted a name that speaks to something deeper: how it feels.
Perfect Software.
I mean “perfect” in the way I mean a “perfect coffee”. There’s no such thing as the world’s best coffee. There’s only your coffee, with the perfect amount of sugar, the perfect milk-to-coffee ratio, the perfect roast, served at the perfect temperature, in a perfect cup.
What It Is and Isn't
Perfect software isn’t the best software. It’s perfect simply because it does exactly what you want, how you want it, when you want it.
It isn’t big either. We have confused "good" with "big". In the Silicon Valley lexicon, software is only valuable if it scales. It must serve millions. It must capture markets. It must grow continuously.
Perfect software offers a different kind of value: Sufficiency. It's the virtue of requiring less, not because you lack ambition, but because you have met the need. While growth demands a constant state of hunger, sufficiency offers satiety. And perfect software delivers that because the moment you deem something perfect, you become content.
Think about it like a gardener describing their produce – “perfectly ripe tomatoes” or “perfectly sweet peaches”. I want that in software.
Perfect software does not need to scale, it needs to fit. It doesn’t need a roadmap, it needs to keep a promise. Perfect software does not need tons of features. It needs to have just the features that the user needs.
The Myth of Perfect Software
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