Don’t build. Compose. — on startups I was driving over the Bay Bridge recently while thinking about the product our company is developing, and trying yet again to somehow map the wild and woolly world of developing software to what feels to me to be the dominant paradigm people use in their mental model of it: civil engineering. It's everywhere in the language: we study software engineering, we do nightly builds, we think about our product architecture. The only problem is that it doesn't match with anyone's experience. You don't usually feel like you're “building” a product at all. There are no blueprints. So, here's the insight I'm currently tossing around in my head: The problem is that software isn't built; it’s written. Engineers are the authors. Product managers are the editors. Perhaps most importantly, the authors and editors need to work together to determine when the novel is finished. Product development is an art, and not a science. P.S.
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