Via 37 Signals, a quote that is true for any writing, even software.
"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." -The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. 1959.
Limits can be fun and too many resources can be harmful.
Constraints drive innovation and forces focus. They are to be embraced, not removed.
says David Heinemeier Hansson on the 37Signals weblog. To explain this he uses the decline of Star Wars movies as an example and quotes a comment from Slashdot:
No the problem is money. Lucas has way too much of it. Especially for the first film [New Hope] there was a severe budget crunch. They were limited in both money and time. I think this forces a film team to make decisions that in the long run are good for the film. If you have no boundaries, you are more likely to throw in little bits that really have no business being in the movie. If you are limited, you are forced to trim the fat and leave the good bits. With the prequels, Lucas had no limits. He effectively had infinite money and time in which to make these films. As a result he wasn’t forced to REALLY think about which parts worked to help the film and which didn’t.
Yeah, that about says it.
Tim Bray writes:
As noted previously Drupal had a little trouble, and the community rallied around: individuals to the tune of over $10,000 and my employer with a server. So, I note that to build out their infrastructure, Drupal is going to use the community donations to buy Dell boxes. Um, let’s see here; IBM and Sun invest in Open Source, big-time. HP’s there too. Dell... uh, Dell? Ecosystem? Community? There’s something wrong with this picture.
I suppose when you're Dell and your hardware is the epitome of low-cost commodity technology you can't afford to be generous. I have to say that Drupal's actions seems like an utter slap in the face that, after the generous donation Sun made, they did not give them any business and went with Dell. Seems rather tactless and unappreciative no matter what the price difference actually.
The sagely Nat Torkington gets to the crux of why Ruby on Rails is so hot.
Whether or not you think Rails is the bee's knees and the wasp's nipples, you have to admit that the 37 Signals crew are master marketers. In many ways, more amazing than the technology of Rails is the way these guys have created buzz and build a community by lowering barriers to entry.
I've been fascinated and inquisitive of this surge of buzz in the past few months surrounding Rails, the Ruby code framework the 37 signals team derived from their web applications. In fact, I just finished watching the movie Nat's post links to. It's quite impressive what they can do there and while Rails certain makes development more rapid and less repetitive, even more a bit more accessible, it still has some rather rough spots and geekery to it. I'm one to talk being a Perl guy. The Perl developer community as a whole has a lot to learn from Rails. (Sorry Catalyst team, it's pretty clear you're missing the point on Rails and have a long way to go.)
So while Rails biggest achievement may be its marketing, there is a lot of technology lessons to be learned and it should be seen as starting point rather than a convergence and a beginning rather than an end.
