Geek philosophy.

This article is possibly the best synopsis I've seen of the difference in philosophies between MS and Apple at the developer level.[1] It's probably no surprise that I identify much more with the purpose-driven approach. This is actually a huge source of my frustration at work... I'm surrounded by capability-driven developers. They just want to keep adding features, no matter how sticky it makes it for users of the system. This drives me *apeshit*. A feature unused is development time wasted. A feature that's hard to use will not *be* used. Therefore, a feature that's hard to use is a waste of our time as developers. We can pat ourselves on the backs for being Oh So Clever, and possibly even L33T, but at the end of the day, the only that matters is: can our users use the system to get their work done quickly, efficiently, and in a way that makes sense to them?

Anyway, it's a great read, and I'd never seen the dichotomy laid out quite that succinctly and clearly before.

[1] It's written by a C# developer of some note, who is recording his experiences learning Apple's Cocoa programming environment. It's been a *fascinating* and balanced look at the two systems, languages, and philosophies. I love it.

Geek philosophy.

This article is possibly the best synopsis I've seen of the difference in philosophies between MS and Apple at the developer level.[1] It's probably no surprise that I identify much more with the purpose-driven approach. This is actually a huge source of my frustration at work... I'm surrounded by capability-driven developers. They just want to keep adding features, no matter how sticky it makes it for users of the system. This drives me *apeshit*. A feature unused is development time wasted. A feature that's hard to use will not *be* used. Therefore, a feature that's hard to use is a waste of our time as developers. We can pat ourselves on the backs for being Oh So Clever, and possibly even L33T, but at the end of the day, the only that matters is: can our users use the system to get their work done quickly, efficiently, and in a way that makes sense to them?

Anyway, it's a great read, and I'd never seen the dichotomy laid out quite that succinctly and clearly before.

[1] It's written by a C# developer of some note, who is recording his experiences learning Apple's Cocoa programming environment. It's been a *fascinating* and balanced look at the two systems, languages, and philosophies. I love it.