I just want a Hamburger
Or too many choices lead to the inability to choose.
In the USA, when one walks into a restaurant to eat a hamburger, one has to endure a full interrogation. How would you like the burger cooked? Would you like cheese on it? What kind of cheese would you like? Would you also like bacon on it? Lettuce and tomato? Onions? Raw or Fried? Mayonnaise, ketchup, relish or mustard? Which kind of mustard? Do you want fries on the side? A pickle too? Sesame on the bun? Raw or toasted?
Give us a break. We want a hamburger, make by a professional in the making of hamburgers, and presented to us as the best mix of ingredients prepared properly that they believe makes a great hamburger. We did not go in there to make choices, we went in to eat a delicious burger, pay and leave.
It turns out software users want the same thing. Product, made by us, that satisfies their needs, without the options and choices and interrogations that make using it difficult, confusing and dissatisfying.
You are not your Customer
One of the most common memes in software development is that great products come from a programmer scratching an itch. They needed software to do something, did not like what was out there, and created a great product. They were their own customer, they knew what they wanted and they made the software for themselves.
As with most meme’s, this one is only somewhat true. They did have an itch. They did create some software. And hundreds of programmers do this every day. But very few of them make great products with this software. Instead, they create something for themselves, to be used by themselves and never shared. And if they do share it, it’s usually a subset of a product that never grows, never sells and never becomes great.
F*ck You, Pay Me
For all you designers, programmers, indies and freelancers, I give you the best, most informative video, you will ever see. Mike Monteiro a.k.a. @mike_ftw, of Mule Design gave a talk on contracts and how to deal with money discussions.
Check it out: F*ck You, Pay Me.
Then follow his advice.
Signing up for Everything
I sign up for every new service that comes along. Every single one. Most of them I never log into again, except to unsubscribe from their mailing lists. Every single new social network, professional network, graphics sharing site, instant messenger, free email provider, free home page display, free blogging app, book reading site, iPhone community app and all the hundreds I am missing, all have one thing in common. A hiltmon login. My hiltmon login.
The Pummeling Pages
Brent Simmons, original author of NetNewsWire and MarsEdit, on visiting modern publication websites:
They’re filled with ads and social-media sharing buttons — and more ads. And Google plus-onesies and Facebook likeys. And also more ads. Plus tweet-this-es. Plus ads. (And, under-the-hood, a whole cruise-ship-full of analytics. The page required well-more than 100 http calls.)
No wonder we all like InstaPaper and Safari’s Reader mode.
Source: The Pummeling Pages
The Way of the Code Samurai
Wil Shipley has been programming for decades, like me. Recently, he reposted a link to an old post that I think all programmers should read. Go on, read it now. I’ll wait.
In it, he talks of the The Way of the Code Samurai, but really just points out the same topics I try to impress on all programmers I teach.
- Think first
- Write all your code “clean” the first time you write it
- Less source code is better
- Optimize only after you are done
The only thing missing from my top 5 is the temporal issue
Four Keys to Apple's Success
Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of worldwide iPod, iPhone, and iOS product marketing, speaking at the “Silicon Valley Comes to Cambridge” event in the UK, shared what he believes to be the four keys to Apple’s success.
Focus
“It means saying no, not saying yes. We do very few things at Apple. We are $100bn in revenue with very few products. There are only so many grade A players. If you spread yourself out over too many things, none of them will be great.”
Migrating to Octopress
Over the years I have created a series of blogs, but never found my voice. It’s time to do it better. So here it is, my voice, my errors, my opinions, my mistakes, my soapbox, and maybe, just maybe, someday I’ll write something interesting, in my voice.