nullEDGE - Fred's final Business Rule with Kevin Clark

What happens the day Fred Luddy’s last business rule executes?

Kevin Clark’s session mixes philosophy, archaeology, and ServiceNow technical stuff. A great way of getting to the end of nullEDGE (luckily, not the end of the universe!)

Kevin uses Fred’s first business rule, still running (after more than 20 years), to explore a bigger question: If you replace every part of the ServiceNow platform piece by piece, is it still the same platform?

It’s not the first time I’ve seen a ServiceNow presentation using Theseus’ paradox, though. That’s how I started my CTA capstone presentation!

Key takeaways

The road ahead

Kevin explores what could happen in the future:

Forms disappear, replaced by AI-generated interfaces.
Workflows become unnecessary.
Tables vanish, replaced by institutional memory.
Eventually, the last instance shuts down.

Advice for developers

He gives some advice for developers to accept and prepare for this state of impermanence:

Design for removal with kill switches.
Keep logic modular.
Document decisions, not just solutions.
Track technical debt in the backlog.

Remember that every time you write a line of code, you’re adding technical debt, increasing entropy, and accelerating the heat death of the universe. So make it count!