I like seeing things in other domains that remind me about principles that are important in software engineering. What do these products have in common:
They're all winning in their field and they're all good enough. Follow any of those links or watch South Park. If you're not familiar with all of them they're all primitive and for the most part ugly creations. Those products don't take meticulous care to reach perfection in their presentation.
What they do well is deliver content. I've read the Drudge Report for maybe 10 years now. It's always been that ugly, right leaning tabloid-esque content. But Matt Drudge has made a niche for himself by scooping stories before the major media and by being a great editor and aggregator of all the news that is out there. I could just imagine him sitting there in notepad and ftping hastily typed raw HTML up to his server. His site makes over a million dollars a year.
South Park is primitive by any standard. Instead of hand drawn characters, they started out with paper cut-outs. Since then they've computerized the process but it's still incredibly simple. This gives them quick turn-around and allows South Park to tackle issues that happened that week. It really just comes down to the content, where others might fuss over minute details of the animation, the South Park guys just come up with amusing entertainment. Other shows would have to coordinate scripts with offshore animators.
Perez Hilton is a celebrity blogger. He just runs a blog, does crude drawings on celebrity pictures and is incredibly popular in that space. Nothing pretty, nothing amazing he just delivers the content that his readers want.
In software, it can be hard to realize when what you're doing is good enough. Everyone wants to build that monument to their brilliance. But sometimes you just gotta get stuff done. It can be the business owner that keeps pushing features people don't need pushing back release dates while making the product more and more irrelevant and unresponsive.
If you have trouble with the concept of good enough you should read about wabi-sabi. I even read a book about wabi-sabi, it's very rare for me to read a book that isn't directly about software. Wabi-sabi is a Japanese aesthetic, basically about seeing the beauty in things that aren't perfect.
blog comments powered by Disqus