entropia

I’ve been reading a lot of software development and design blogs and articles lately.  Coding Horror.  Joel on Software.  37 Signals.  Paul Graham.  Anything they link to and anything that links to them.  And it’s all good stuff.  Inspiring, if nothing else.

But for the most part, it’s all stuff I already know.  “Don’t repeat yourself”.  “Eat your own dogfood”.  In general:  like what you do and do it well.  Sure, the great writers can help you realize things you never knew you knew, but that only helps so much.

It reminds me of listening to political speeches.  Rallying the public.  Inspiring.  Everyone knows you should “Ask not what your contry can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, but that doesn’t mean we don’t like hearing it.  Just like we don’t mind reading about how successful we can be if we just follow a few simple business rules and use some common sense.

How Not To Achieve Business Success is a great write-up on the subject.

Hanging on every word of Joel Spolsky (my favorite software industry inspiration) is no better. As he exposes his journey of building a software startup into a success he makes it all sound so sensible and straightforward. Does that help me? No, not a bit. It has been interesting to watch but nothing that he did has worked for me.

Just like everything else in life, you can’t become successful in software just by reading about it.  Joel et al are great as long as you keep thinking for yourself.  Just like with politicians, you can’t rely on someone else to tell you how to live your life.  If you follow the leader too closely, you’ll just end up tripping on their shoes.