Shanti’s Dispatches

That’s what Evan Williams said at the Future of Web Apps Summit last week in SF.

He was even going to go so far as to make it into a poster and hang it on the wall. Personally, I prefer this one from dispair.com:

p.s. sorry for not liveblogging the event more, like I said I would. luckily there are plenty of other sites out there w/ coverage.

Talking vs. Typing

I think that’s one of the things I like about working from home most of the time. You tend to spend a lot more time coding, than talking / debating and working out features.

Personally, I think it’s more productive to code 2-3 hours on something, trying out (in live code) as many different things as possible, than say, and hour or two of debate on the subject.

At least 50% of the time, it seems like you end up getting it wrong anyway, no matter how long you debated.

Of course, there’s always the danger of rogue coders going off the reservation and implementing stuff that is totally crazy or will never be used in live production. I think that’s OK — much like Google’s 20% time.

Gernally, programmers (or maybe it’s just my particular sensibility) would rather see things getting done, than endless debates, with no real forward progress. Hearing stories about Microsoft and their endless meetings and Powerpoint presentations, it sounds like they’ve fallen into the trap of Talking, Not Typing.

Astute readers will note the ironicalness of me blogging this instead of actually coding something right now. Ahem.

You can bookmark this, digg this or check the cosmos