September 2009
6 posts
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Duct tape programmers are pragmatic. Zawinski popularized Richard Gabriel’s precept of Worse is Better. A 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it’s in your lab where you’re endlessly polishing the damn thing. Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it. […]
One thing you have to be careful about, though, is that duct tape programmers are the software world equivalent of pretty boys… those breathtakingly good-looking young men who can roll out of bed, without shaving, without combing their hair, and without brushing their teeth, and get on the subway in yesterday’s dirty clothes and look beautiful, because that’s who they are. You, my friend, cannot go out in public without combing your hair. It will frighten the children. Because you’re just not that pretty. Duct tape programmers have to have a lot of talent to pull off this shtick. They have to be good enough programmers to ship code, and we’ll forgive them if they never write a unit test, or if they xor the “next” and “prev” pointers of their linked list into a single DWORD to save 32 bits, because they’re pretty enough, and smart enough, to pull it off.
” —The Duct Tape Programmer - Joel on Software
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“The film makers do an excellent job of demonstrating how meaningful life on line is for people, especially people with sucky real life jobs. At the same time, they show how unfulfilling life on-line can be compared to the actual world. Walking this fine line without demonizing or glorifying the lives of hard-core game players is probably the finest achievement of the film. The portrayal is so true: the rooms strewn with empty soda bottles, people explaining how the ennui of their jobs makes raiding seem better than real life, and of course the numerous protestations that people would stop playing the game is their girlfriend/spouse/job asked them to. Finally, someone who understands the interesting story about MMOGs is not RMT and gold farming, but overweight Americans eating cheese spray and falling asleep at their keyboards trying to level to 70.”
—Savage Minds on Second Skin
