Something is definitely happening to Joel Spolsky these days. First he writes an article on how a software project was a major success despite violating most of his "Joel Principles". And then, all of a sudden, he attacks the whole genre of "pseudo popular scientific" literature, because it mostly uses anecdotal evidence and recycles stories, though he himself, as he honestly admits, have been doing just that for the last eight or so years.
Now first of all, I love reading Joel, and I think he is absolutely right. It's true that there have been quite a few books lately that built entire theories by extrapolating anecdotal examples. However, I think that this genre of literature, problematic as it is, serves at least one good purpose - and that is: it causes some people to think about stuff you otherwise wouldn't think about.
I will give two examples, and I will start with one from Joel himself.
One of my favorite posts is "Hitting the high notes", from 2005. In this post, Joel describes in great length, why he thinks that the formula "Best Working Conditions" -> "Best Programmers" -> "Best Software", works and ultimately leads to "Proft!". As part of the argument, Joel brings some statistics from "Professor Stanley Eisenstat at Yale", who has collected some data on the students of the programming course he has taught. Using this data, Joel shows that there can be a ten times difference in productivity between programmers, and uses this argument to make his point.
Besides this, roughly scientific, but nonetheless single and isolated experiment, Joel uses a vast variety of examples ranging from Jonathan Ive to Angelina Jolie and ties them all together into one of the greatest posts ever written on the subject.
Another example, comes from another great author and blogger, a favorite of mine, Seth Godin, who couple of years ago published a book called "The Dip". In this book, of over eighty pages, Seth offers these two invaluable pieces of advice:
1. Try not to start something you will not finish, cause otherwise you will waste your time. And...
2. If you are stuck somewhere, get out, unless you are not really stuck, in which case, keep pushing as hard as you can.
OK, mmm, let's see, that does not sound that hard. All I have to do is figure out what to start, and when to quit. Wait, I've seen this pattern before, it's called life, hey, my life is simple again.
Of course, it is not possible to follow the advice as it is given as it is not possible to deduce a system out of several anecdotal examples. But as long as those book's intention is to make you think, rather than provide ready made answers, they are useful as they might make you give some of these issues an additional look and probably come up with something new, exciting and useful of your own.
The paradox of insular language
7 months ago
