As a long time programmer, I have written hello world countless times. And I still do it. I am doing it now. "Hello World" allows me to focus on the specific goal of getting text on the screen but along the way I end up with the groundwork laid for the next steps of building whatever it is I have in mind. This blog post is that in a lot of ways.
Why am I writing at all?
I have been building software for getting on 20 years now and for the last 10 or so I have been doing a variation on the same theme. Some organizations take to it faster and we get further along the path than others but the path is predictable, at least within my little world of saas startups.
I am writing to start to encapsulate how I think about building and delivering products. These are things that I often spend time explaining to every new team I work with. What goes into building a great product? What is the difference in a product and a piece of software? Why is reducing toil worth the cost?
Okay, but why?
I am writing because I want to work with people who want to build great products. I want to find those people who care about bringing value to customers and treat that as their craft. I hope that my writing inspires you to reject "playing at company", to build just enough software to get the job done (and no less!), and to be driven by needs of real (not imaginary) users.
So what should I expect here?
I will focus on topics that will help engineers and product managers build great products. The words will be mine and not Claude's. We get enough of his work in my codebases.