Sunday, March 20, 2005
Tip of the Iceberg
Joel Spolsky gave a speech arguing the iceberg view of software:
"90% of the program is the guts which sits below the surface. This is where programmers spend most of their time. Customers (and often managers) concentrate on the 10% that sits above the water. They look at the drop shadows in your graphs and the bevelled edges on your windows to decide whether or not your software is good."
Joel is right. All too often development-led teams concentrate on the guts, leaving too many rough edges that make the product unsellable. Like Joel suggests, we should all aim for iPod like beauty in product and software design.
"90% of the program is the guts which sits below the surface. This is where programmers spend most of their time. Customers (and often managers) concentrate on the 10% that sits above the water. They look at the drop shadows in your graphs and the bevelled edges on your windows to decide whether or not your software is good."
Joel is right. All too often development-led teams concentrate on the guts, leaving too many rough edges that make the product unsellable. Like Joel suggests, we should all aim for iPod like beauty in product and software design.
