Duct-Tape Programmers
Here’s a good read from Joel Spolsky, on what he calls ‘duct-tape programmers’. The post is actually a review of the book Coders at Work, by Peter Seibel, but Spolsky’s enthusiasm is infectious and spot-on. The inspiration in this case is Jamie Zawinski, who was at Netscape in the early days, and the point here is that delivering something imperfect is infinitely preferable to postponing a project (or never shipping) in the name of perfection. A pragmatic, functional approach may look messy to some, but the measure of success is not your approach, it’s the end to which your skills are applied. Not a new lesson, but worthy of a read.
“Yeah,” he says, “At the end of the day, ship the f*cking thing! It’s great to rewrite your code and make it cleaner and by the third time it’ll actually be pretty. But that’s not the point—you’re not here to write code; you’re here to ship products.”
My hero.
