Please, please, for the love of all things holy, please stop using the term “this X is broken.” It’s not broken, it just isn’t what you want it to be. What am I talking about?

1. iPhone – This phone is “broken” because it doesn’t have a keyboard, or it doesn’t integrate with exchange.

2. SimpleDB – This data store is “broken” because it doesn’t have good referential integrity. You can’t aggregate easily.

3. Google App Engine – This cloud based computing environment is “broken” because it doesn’t use a relational database, or it’s “broken” because it doesn’t use Java.

Each of these products provides a solution to a given problem. There is nothing broken about any of them.В  Would you test drive a Tesla Roadster only to then complain that you can’t haul lumber in it?