“The Development Abstraction Layer” or what Management should really do?

joelonsoftware.com

3 points·mjoksimovic··4 comments

I actually accidentally found this blog and I've been fascinated with articles from this guy.

One that really caught my attention is the one that I'm sharing here.

I'm curious what the general opinion is here?

Mind you, article is from 2006 ! And what's more, most of his articles are from 2000s and YET, if you read them today, hell, they're 100% to the point.

Thoughts?

I think any model that doesn't put customers first in a free market is going to get ate alive eventually.

I agree with that. But I don't think that creating what this guy calls "Development Abstraction Layer" has to necessarily sacrifice the time-to-market?

My understanding is -- ensure that deadlines are clear and communicated and then ensure that people have everything that they need to do in order to focus on development (and that means, among other things - less interruptions).

I was a regular reader of this blog from its early days, and also thought that it had a lot of good advice. One article that sticks in my mind is the one that advised against doing complete rewrites of software systems:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23725867

Many of the articles continue to be frequently posted on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=joelonsoftware.com

In case you're not familiar with Joel Spolsky, he went on to be one of the co-founders of Stack Overflow:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Spolsky

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