A Brief History of Ajax
Another post about JavaScript and HTTP? Are you kidding? I’ve just finished writing an entire book on that stuff. Today, I’m turning away from the hi-tech world, to have a look at Homer’s epic poem ‘The Iliad’. Or so I thought. Maybe I just haven’t been getting enough sleep lately, but when I picked it up, I couldn’t help noticing several similarities between the story and the modern IT enterprise.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the story, here’s a brief run-down. The city of Troy has been under siege for many years by the Argives, a motley collection of Greek warlords, who are camped on the beach nearby in their ships. The gods feature heavily, and are themselves divided in their support of one side or the other, with many shenanigans going on to distract Zeus (a Trojan supporter) while the lesser gods help out the Argives in various ways.
The poem begins with Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Argives, in a sulk, refusing to join in the battle. There are several lengthy (and rather gruesome) accounts of battles, in which nothing much seems to be achieved. Hector is the top Trojan warrior, and has a field day until eventually Achilles gets over his strop on account of Hector killing an old friend, and kills Hector, drags his body around on the back of his chariot, and then says he is sorry. The most famous part of the story, the Trojan Horse scam that Ulysses dreams up, is never recounted in the poem. Is Homer suggesting here that the keenly-anticipated endpoint, i.e. deployment to the customer, is rarely, if ever, achieved?
Fresco depicting early Greek IT contractor re-inventing the wheel
The continuous brutal throwing of manpower into a hopeless task first brought to my attention the simlarity to some large IT projects, of course. Many of the Argives haven’t been home for ten years, living a shadowy half-life spurred on by the management’s promises of glory and free pizza if they stay on late (apart from the bit about the pizza, which doesn’t get invented in Classical literature until Virgil’s Aeneid).
My attention was drawn to the figure of Aias Telamonides, also refered to in some texts as ‘Ajax’. (The name has quite a nice ring to it, I think you’ll agree. No doubt some bright spark will adopt it for their Open Source project before long.) Aias is a giant of a man, who, in the absence of Achilles, holds off the Trojans almost single-handedly at times, fighting with a huge rocky fragment of a meteorite as his weapon. He’s a surly character, though, and ends up getting into a fight with Achilles over the armour and weapons of some vanquished foe. In many ways, he represents the archetype of the hastily-cobbled-together stop-gap solution to a much deeper problem (Achilles’ tantrum), being powerful but inflexible, bloated to a monstrous size, and increasingly difficult to control as the (in this case, literal) deadline approaches.
And finally, the clincher in the whole Iliad-as-software-development-saga theory comes from the pitiful scene of Achilles chasing Hector around the walls of Troy and then dragging him from his chariot by the ankles. The poor hero has obviously been driven mad by the long hours and perpetual toil, lost his bearings and is symbolically trying to reinvent the wheel. And when Hector’s body is thrown to the hounds, who refuse to touch it owing to the divine protection afforded to the dead hero, Homer is surely casting a sly reference to the inability of our heroes to eat their own dog food. It is in the pathos of these mixed metaphor that Homer’s genius is really revealed.
Agile development and RUP have had their day. I can heartily recommend this text as a primer for the truly forward-thinking project manager.