Shanti’s Dispatches

It looks like DreamHost just had the biggest wtf ever.

The thing is, accidents do happen. This was, however, one helluva blunder.

But this kind of thing happens when people are tired and not thinking straight. Forced 80 hour a week startup machismo cultures, for example, often result in this kind of stuff.

I’ve been there — luckily never made a mistake that led to over-billing by $7.5 million freaking dollars! Lulz.

I was talking to a friend recently about how I’ve been won over by the Apple style of approach to product development.

Not that all of my stuff is nearly that good — but that it’s something to strive for. In the context, we were talking about a business that was basically a play on cost savings.

i.e. a small or medium-sized firm might hire us or use XYZ service and you can save $X per month that way.

Silicon Valley could give a rats ass about any kind of business like this. Unless it was game changing, like Skype, no one here would really care.

Part of the culture is wanting to impress your peers. That’s what helps keep the machinery flowing. Already sold your startup and sitting on $3M worth of cash? Okay, so you can sit on the couch and play Halo 3 for a few months, but even that will get old after a while. So for your next startup, part of what you’ll be wanting to do is both: A) impress your peers, and B) hopefully eventually have it become a huge success (see A).

I’ve come across many coders who have not properly planned their Greatist Hits of programming, per se.

Sit across from a group of coders at your average meetup, and ask them if they write tests first for their fun “side project”:

Dev #1: Well, y’know, I kind of just develop the code (without tests) as I go.
Dev #2: If I had more time, y’know… I’d write tests, and stuff.

This mirrors my own tinkerings. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Test-Driven Development or that it’s in any way inferior to Cowboy Method (TM).

I’m just saying… a lot of hackers… hackers in the wild, do not tend to follow TDD when tinkering on their own fun projects.

I would add tests… but I might change this later, and then I’d have to change the tests, too.

Ah screw it. I’ll just code it up and get the darn thing working first…

A lot of these projects end up being the del.icio.uses, YouTubes and Scribds of the world.