The Mu

There’s a really scary thought out there: most software developers are rowing backwards. That means they’re creating things that someone else will someday need to fix. Bruce Eckel related this story recently on his blog.

You’d automatically think: There must be a deep sickness in the software development community to make this a fact. Well, first of all, just because I experimented with Google’s chart API to add a graphic to this entry doesn’t mean there are any real statistics behind this claim. It is a gut feeling from someone in the software business. With all the frustration that people who need to fix problems feel, it is not surprising that the “forward rowers” feel outnumbered.

But Eckel goes on to hint that much of this rowing in the wrong direction is precipitated by shifting business priorities, changing technical climate, and natural learning curves. We all think we’re heading in the right direction while we’re headed there. It is only in hindsight that we can quantify the blunders that got us into some pretty terrible situations.

Finally, he shows how the answer is to assemble people on a team who share some key positive attributes. Essentially, Eckel concludes that for each team member you want a person who is:

• Technically Sound
• A Critical Thinker
• A Problem Solver
• An Independent Learner
• Adaptive
• Non-toxic

In the old FizzBuzz debate, we heard how you can start to test for these kinds of things. But in my experience some teams gel and some don’t. Certainly this is because personality and motivation is made up of more that just six identifiable dimensions. Thus, when a great team comes together, it seems like magic.

My son is looking for ways to get his own revenue stream going. He’s a smart kid and eager to turn one or two of his many ideas into cash. He came to me today asking about Google Ads and AdSense. I made the point that he’d best get really good content and try to see what kind of readership he was getting first with Google Analytics before considering tossing up advertising on his site.

And talk about serendipity, less than an hour later the following article showed up in my syndication reader: Most Bloggers Don’t Deserve Any Ad Revenue.

There are very few blogs out there that have excellent, compelling content on a regular basis. Most seem to provide subtle spins on the latest big buzz in the blogosphere. Many cater very competently to tiny niche interests. The omnibus blogs that really are akin to personal diaries have become difficult to follow loyally these days. I used to love reading the daily thoughts of people whose thinking I admired, no matter what the subject was. Now there are too many blogs to follow regularly so I syndicate through Google Reader and skim the headlines.

I think advertisers are looking for mass appeal blogs (delivering many eyeballs) that zero in on predictable topics (to target their marketing). Most blogs simply don’t fit the bill.