In this piece, Seth Godin argues that understanding something is better than just memorising a process. Understanding is certainly key, but I think that misses something: there is value to in steps.

True, if you slavishly follow the steps, you can’t adapt. But if you don’t document the steps, it’s easy to miss one and get yourself into trouble. The challenge is knowing when to follow the steps and when to improvise.

Before you ask, yes, it is weird that I’m reading a bunch of “management” books.

You can watch Michael Lopp’s career by following his various books. Start with “Being Geek” [affiliate link], the software developer’s career handbook. The move into management resulted in “Managing Humans” [affiliate link]. And his promotion from manager to director and executive gets you “The Art of Leadership” [affiliate link] which is the book I recently finished.

I made the mistake of suggesting that there was a blog to be made from this tweet. This is that post.

People still underestimate the value in (Developer|Operator) Experience when building platforms and honestly it’s kinda shocking to me.

If you want to win mindshare you need to make your tools actually usable. If you don’t want to lose it you need the same.

First: I agree with the sentiment. Maybe not to the same extent as Danielle, but I fight the same battles in my day job. I wanted to say this now because, on reading the rest, you may think the opposite. What follows is an explanation of why this is a common situation. I don’t mean it as a justification.

Seth Godin has had a couple of posts recently about how to treat your best customers. One of the thing that he observes is that the way you define “best” is not necessarily the most obvious. Is a customer that pays full price always better than one that recommends your service to five of their friends?

In defining the best customers, my mind wandered to the opposite extreme, the worst customers. This reminds me of something that happened a few years ago. It’s only fair to note that I heard this “through the grape-vine.” It could be completely true or mostly made up, but where-ever it falls I think it’s an interesting anecdote.

• Senior City-zens: The World’s 10 Oldest Still-Inhabited Cities – “I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from.” Maybe Eddie Izzard should have gone with “I was born in the middle east, where the really old history comes from.”
• Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule – If you can’t actually avoid meetings, then at least try to schedule them so you can maximise your productivity. Rings true…
• There’s a pretty significant problem in the new… – I’m starting to expect Graham Chapman to burst in at any second and announce that this is getting far too silly. Apparently any iPhone app that allows “unfiltered internet access,” everything from web browsers to Twitter clients to, presumably, delicious.com clients, now requires a 17+ rating.

A few years ago I was subcontracted to one of the large consultancies. I was taking over from someone who was, supposedly, quite senior and the task at hand, I was told, was very hard. I should take copious notes as she wouldn’t necessarily be around afterwards to help me. Making a mistake or missing out any one step could be disastrous to the whole process. If I did everything properly each new installation would take about a week.

• Apple introduces new Apple TV software, lowers hardware pricing – Now potentially more useful with the movie rentals. But where is the price drop in the UK?!
• Dell tells customer ‘Mac is good option’ – “Now, it’s possible that the techie was referring to a 1970s rock band, or to an item of waterproof clothing. But we can’t help concluding that he was indeed talking about Apple’s operating system.”
• Steve Jobs gets cohesive – Some cool stuff from Apple at the MacExpo. I think the Time Capsule is going to be on my shopping list when it ships next month. The movie rentals (when they get to the UK) look interesting but they really need to build their catalogue!
• How to recognise a good programmer – Great discussion on recognising great developers. The problem would seem to be finding them! Most recruiters just pattern match on CVs which tends to favour the “career” developer.