Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Toolmaking Predilection

So the day before yesterday I started working on Claire, it's something new in the programming world that should cause programmers to make less bugs, you can find more about it here.

Today, I started thinking about how I'm going to manage my time to work on both Claire and Deviyo, then only I realized that, the reason I got the idea in the first place is because I had problems with Deviyo, I started creating Claire to make developing Deviyo easier, suddenly, something I read in Dreaming in Code came to my mind, here it is:

In software management, coordination is not an afterthought or an ancillary matter; it is the heart of the work, and deciding what tools and methods to use can make or break a project. But getting sidetracked in managing those tools is a patent temptation. When the cry of "Let's build it ourselves!" arises, geeks are all too happy to rally and cheer. A celebrated (and perhaps apocryphal) bit of graffiti from MIT captures this: "I would rather write programs to help me write programs than write programs." Similarly, there is a saying attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." This principle, which found its way into the business advise manual The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, appeals to every programmer's passion for toolmaking. But if it becomes an end in itself, it can drive the best-organized projects into a ditch.

I don't know what to say, that book is amazing! Everything it mentions seams to be true, I'm so happy I bought it, it's the only book I bought, usually I either borrow books or get free e-books from the Internet and print them.

1 comment:

Abdullah Ali said...

That could even be a lesson in life and not only programming. I like the concept. Nice stuff.