"I Don't Think the Empire Had Wookies in Mind"

There is a Dark Side to web development, Derek Featherstone of Further Ahead argued this morning, and that is poor accessibility. He points to the moment in Star Wars Episode VI when Han and Chewie are trying to get the stolen shuttle past the Imperials, and Chewie can barely fit in the flight seat. Why? Because the Empire didn't make shuttles to fit people, they made people (well, Stormtroopers) to fit their machine. Real world designers don't get to do that. Well, except the really creepy ones.

Like a jedi master to a conference room full of padawans, he had some lessons to pass on. Tab-index is the Jar-Jar Binks of programming (it seemed like a universally appealing idea at the time); When your bosses see that people like Wookies (or whatever part of your system works), you end up with the The Star Wars Holiday Special; And don't be so proud of that technological terror you've constructed, 'cos that two-meter thermal vent will take you down every time.

But his biggest lesson may be to get the basics right from day one and add the bells and whistles when the technology allows. If you have a good core (the original cinematic releases) you can up-grade later to fix bugs only you can see (the special editions) and then re-release the original versions on DVD to keep the hardcore purists happy (shut up the whiners. Oops. Only meant to think that.)

Of course, Featherstone may have undercut his credibility a little bit when he didn't know that George Lucas didn't direct Return of the Jedi (R.I.P. Richard Marquand. Hey, don't put the words Star Wars in your title and not expect the fanboys to correct you.