Seeking Nirvana

I often wonder if Buddhists really would appreciate Nirvana. The end goal, the attainment, is not the point, but its seeking is. The path to heaven is the guiding principle for living this life. Ignoring this life & assuming that heaven awaits goes against everything every religion is based on. No religion I've heard of says "be a vegetable, & good things will come". If you know of one, I'm in the market.

The same goes for software development (not the smoothest segue-way, but there you go). Most software products seek perfection, intending to get to that perfect state where there is no maintenance for the developers, & no cost to sales (that is, the hypothetical product cash cow). This is not realistic. It happens in some products, which then fade away & die over time. Reality is the constant striving, whether we're talking about the product that could reach a wider market if it had one more feature, or the software release that has only one bug in the issue tracker. In either case, the current state should be celebrated. It's a wonderful thing to be able to say that you've nearly reached an ideal. It's unrealistic, & can be deflating, to say that you have reached it. What next?

Product development should live in the now - what has been achieved, & what is being achieved, is measurable. It makes us want to improve the product & ourselves. It gives us something to do, a place to be, people to see, a sense of achievement, & all of those things that define why we're in the industry. We get a buzz from doing. Whether you're an engineer or a salesperson, once you've built or sold, you go back & do it again. If you learn nothing from the process, you get bored & give up.
I am now suggesting that you take delight from every imperfection as well as each partial success - they are the same thing. Both mean that you need to strive more, work harder (or smarter), aim high, dream. Maybe the next release will ship without issues; maybe the next product will be the killer app; maybe the next sale will be the one that propels the company into higher profits.
Maybe, just maybe, we might reach Nirvana, someday.