the.com/interoperability
The art of getting systems that hate each other to shake hands anyway.
means The capacity of different systems, devices, or software to work together, exchange data, and use that data without special effort on the user's end.
from Built from 'inter-' (between, among) plus 'operate' and the noun suffix '-ability'. It's a 20th-century technical coinage, rising with computing and telecommunications once engineers needed a word for machines built by rival companies being forced to cooperate — a Latin skeleton dressed up for the age of standards committees.
- not compatibility
- compatible means similar, interoperable means cooperative despite differences
- real cost
- most IT budgets vanish into translating one system's dialect into another's
- standards irony
- everyone wants one standard, which is why we now have fourteen
- USB-C example
- took two decades to make one cable everyone agreed to share