You gotta love Paul Graham...


Or, at least as I do, appreciate him more the more you read.

Just some quotes from his latest book (currently on the nightstand) and his website.

In the desktop software business, doing a release is a huge trauma, in which the whole company sweats and strains to push out a single, giant piece of code. Obvious comparisons suggest themselves, both to the process and the resulting product.
(from Hackers & Painters, Big Ideas from the Computer Age, Ch. 5 The Other Road Ahead, section Releases, p. 62)

I really like that. (Probably appeals to that base, scatalogical part of my nature?) Granted, he's writing about the differences between web-based and desktop-based applications, but if you've been paying attention at all, you know where I'd like to take it. More seriously:

What do hackers want? Like all craftsmen, hackers like good tools. In fact, that's an understatement. Good hackers find it unbearable to use bad tools. They'll simply refuse to work on projects with the wrong infrastructure.
(from Great Hackers, http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html)

"They simply refuse to work on projects with the wrong infrastructure." Hmmm. Could that be part of our problem, in addition to poorly defined goals?

Yum: More food for thought!

Posted: Tue - September 28, 2004 at 10:10 AM           |

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