I remember the first web browser I ever saw.  I was working at NYU at the time.  Gopher was the hot technology du jour and of course we were running a server.  A colleague called me into his office and showed me some early version of NCSA Mosaic running on an X Terminal (which in those days referred to a piece of hardware).  I don't remember my exact words, but they were something along the lines of "meh".  Another in a long line of personal failures to recognize the next new thing before it bit me in the ass ...

No, on second thought, let's not.

One of the classic decisions any business has to grapple with is make-or-buy. From the smallest private enterprise in the consumer beverage space, to large government agencies in outer space, figuring out whether it makes more sense to roll your own or let somebody else do it for you is a decision that stares you in the face every day.

The amazing thing is that when it comes to scripting languages, the decision is no longer buy-or-make, but download-or-make. You used to have to compare the cost of building something yourself to purchasing ...