. For a long time, I've wondered why Adobe doesn’t just rewrite Photoshop. Even without knowledge of the deep inner workings of the app, it just feels old. Adobe keeps adding more functionality, even some performance tweaks like GPU acceleration, but the whole thing often feels one feature short of collapse. New versions have consistently pushed the capabilities of modern computers and operating systems, so they always feel a bit slower than younger, more refined apps. Maybe a fresh start would make Photoshop feel a little less 1990 and a little more 2013?
Well, it's not going to happen.
"It would never be the same if you started over today," says Bryan O'Neil Hughes, a senior product manager. "Like a city, it takes on its own personality." He cribbed the analogy from me, but I cribbed it from another developer.
An all-new Photoshop wouldn't be... Photoshop.
"If you wanted to do everything Photoshop does, you'd have to do it in the same way Photoshop does," explains Thomas. And a rewrite would likely take a decade, and, thanks to the error-prone nature of building complex software, it might never be completed.