Avoiding Kits

So in this post I’m going to reject the commonly accepted wisdom and look at why specializing is hard, why it fails and what an alternative path looks like. The answer lies in developing strong opinions and a distinctive vibe.

Tools encourage default behaviors, they dictate patterns and golden paths. These represent the tool makers’ ideal user experiences. If following along breaks your back, then it’s not because you tried to lift too much, it’s because the tool applied pressure in all the wrong places.

A tradeoff occurs every time you get feedback. You become slightly more mainstream, slightly more aligned with the zeitgeist. You become marginally more of an exploiter than an explorer , standing on the shoulders of the giants who conceived the paradigm you’re striving to build upon. This is very effective when you want to align your work with oth... See more

At some point you will discover the Right Way to program, the thing which makes this all make sense , and you'll be convinced that the whole field would be so much better off if everybody else programmed the Right Way, too. For me the Right Way was test-driven development; for you it might be functional programming, lisp, formal methods or one of a

... See more

At some point you will discover the Right Way to program, the thing which makes this all make sense , and you'll be convinced that the whole field would be so much better off if everybody else programmed the Right Way, too. For me the Right Way was test-driven development; for you it might be functional programming, lisp, formal methods or one of a

... See more

All I needed to hear when I was younger that the things I love were worth something. We live in the age of tooling and creation. There is no shortage of platforms and resources that make it easier for us to build, but there’s also a lack of cultural understanding around that turns young people off things they’re ridiculously good at and love, along... See more