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Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

A: "Dude, have you seen this Nail-o-Matic 2000 nailgun?"

B: "No. It looks totally awesome, it's so shiny and chrome..."

A: "Yeah, it's the latest thing, I picked it up last night. Let's see how it does on this roof..."

A puts a shingle down and shoots a nail in. The nail rips through the shingle, blasts a 2-inch diameter hole in the roof and embeds itself firmly into the floor of the second story.

B: "Whoa, that's AWESOME! Can I try?"

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

A: "Dude, this ROCKS! Hey, boss!"

C: "Yeah?"

A: "Good news, we're going to finish this job in record time!"

C: "Whoa! Where'd you score a Nail-o-Matic 2000!?! That's awesome! I've heard all sorts of great things about how powerful it is!"

Nail-o-Matic 2000: Because More Power Is Always Better. Always.

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A. You know? What we really should do is get that new Blast-O-Matic bulldozer I have parked outside and tear all this crap down and start over! I saw a video on YouTube last night that said if we built houses using silly putty that they were impermeable to weather!

B. That's a great idea. Does it work with the Nail-o-Matic?

A. I don't see why not. They are both made of atoms.

C. Hang on guys. That's not going to work. What am I thinking?

A. What do you mean?

C. Dude. We have to draw pictures of the house first! I mean without pictures? We're just throwing stuff together. Our problem all along is that we haven't drawn enough pictures.

B. So if we draw enough pictures, then can we use the Blast-O-Matic, the Nail-O-Matic, and the silly putty?

C. Sure! I don't see why not. If we spend enough time drawing diagrams, dang near anything should be possible. At least on the diagram. Let me just pull out this circuit diagram for the Pentium CPU and we'll see how it relates to the average density of silly putty over time...

(B runs out and begins bulldozing house while A and C huddle over a blueprint with their slide rules)

B. Hey guys! You're doing a great job! Let me know when you're ready. I'll just go ahead and get started with the bulldozing.

So do I understand correctly that in this metaphor the poor quality of software is mostly because the practitioners are morons? I need to revisit the creeping complexity in my own projects and try to understand where I used the wrong nailgun, because this seems like a super productive analogy.

The joke is that nowhere in this picture is the actual guy who is receiving value from the work, the guy who keeps saying in survey after survey that our work sucks -- the guy paying for the house. We distract ourselves by everything under the sun from the continuous conversation and relationship management with the value receiver necessary to make sure we're doing something that the guy writing the check likes.

Sometimes we're distracted in an angry way "Guys! We need to straighten up and do X!" Sometimes we distract ourselves just because of bright and shiny objects "Wow! Take a look at that!" Sometimes we quibble over seemingly insignificant items. Sometimes we take things that should be important and elevate them to the highest level possible.

But the overall pattern is clear. We want to do anything and everything -- except be joined at the hip into the value stream, which is exactly what our job is.

This was the hard lesson that startups taught me: lots of stuff can be neat, valuable, or worth consideration. But a true professional knows that whatever he is doing, he is doing for another human being - and so he seeks to befriend that person, have a trustworthy relationship, and look out after that person's best interests.

That's not nearly as much fun as flipping bits, and it deals with a lot of messy social and human things.

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