Joel Spolsky: The Duct Tape Programmer

Here is another thought provoking article by Joel Spolsky.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html

A Duct Tape Programmer is a great asset to an organization. He is probably also a Pragmatic Programmer.

This type of a programmer is domain focused.

·         He uses technology to solve a domain requirement as opposed to finding a problem for a cool new technology.

·         He probably uses the YAGNI principle. A team of Duct Tape Programmers, especially in a startup are a great asset.

·         He ensure quick feature implementation and release cycles, which are very essential for survival in a startup

Joel has covered a lot of other areas very well. The only point that made me cringe was related to “unit tests”. Knowing Joel’s views on unit tests, it is not surprising. Well there is no such thing as being perfect. J

Having said that, there is always a place for programmers who tend to always look at new technologies and methodologies and then go searching for a problem to solve.

·         They are never satisfied with what they did in the previous release.

·         They always looking to do something new.

·         Sometimes they may leave a trail of unused languages, technologies, frameworks and libraries in your product but

·         other times they will come up with something that works magic and opens up avenues and channels to take your software to new levels and new directions. 

I know this is very vague, but if you have the resources, a few programmers like these can help develop creative concepts that could revolutionize your software development or product portfolio .

A Duct Tape Programmer will ensure that your product is good, an “unsatisfied” ( I am not in the same league as Joel in most cases and obviously in naming) programmer can make a product great.

 

Of course having the very best personnel in either case will make it easier to succeed.

Posted via email from dineshbhat's posterous

Google Wave

Google wave is the next wave in the collaboration space. Gmail always provided a context to a conversation by grouping threads. This takes it to the next level by providing the context in line. Email is almost becoming irrelevant in the consumer space the same way snail mail was sometime ago. Social networking tools will do to email what email did to mail. Email will be relegated to official docs and junk. Google wave is going to make the process faster.
Enterprise adoption will send wiki's to oblivion. Enterprises will need a better security and auditing model, if it is not already being built. Real time nature of this protocol open's a whole new communication channel that will be used in exciting new ways. I have a feeling that the wave client is just the appetizer. The real killer app is yet to come.
I am looking forward to seeing how google voice will be integrated.
This looks like a much better platform for unified messaging than a lot of the earlier pretenders.

Posted via email from dineshbhat's posterous