stand between order and chaos

September 24, 2008

“All web apps are trying to suck. They are trying to be bloated. They are trying to be unstructured. They are trying to be confusing. You are the stopgap. You are the one who stands between order and chaos. You are the sniper who must pick off every distraction, unneeded feature, and extra word that doesn’t absolutely have to be there. You must be a killer. You must say no. You must anger those who disagree with you. That is the only way to make something great.” — Matt Linderman (via inspireux)

Matt Linderman relates storytelling to software development, referencing a video interview with Ira Glass from This American Life. Failure is a big part of success. You don’t want to be making mediocre stuff. He says that killing is a big part of bringing something great to life. While the whole killing metaphor doesn’t resonate with me, I agree with his perspective on the process. For every great idea for every compelling story, you need to leave a huge amount of footage on the floor of the editing room. In software, we toss out ideas on the whiteboard, discuss and discard dozens of approaches, and experiment with quick prototypes, all so that we can release one great feature or workflow. The code that is left behind after the editing process will then be clean, internally consistent and enable the person using the software to achieve their goals smoothly and easily.

This short clip is worth watching:

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