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Re: I think I'm done with thought leaders
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Posted: Mar 9, 2004 12:05 AM
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> I suppose your intent was to say: I'm done with thought
> leaders who've never written any code in the real
> world. That's a sentiment I can sympathize with.
I can sympathize too, but I'm not done with those guys yet.
A happy side benefit of doing the interviews I do is that I get to grill a lot of so-called thought leaders face to face. I try to read their book and articles ahead of time. When I find an idea I like, I ask them about it, because that way I get that idea onto Artima. When I find something that sounds suspicious to me, I challenge them on it. Often (not always), I get a new perspective on what they said that makes more sense. In other words, often it doesn't quite come across in their book, but in person, I can be made to understand it.
I've learned something from everyone I've talked to, even the ones who haven't done real work in a while. And I try to pass those insights along in the interview articles. That's why I'm not done with them. They have something to teach me if I look, even though some of what they have to say doesn't help me much.
In 1996, I took a year off and wrote a book. It took me a year, almost full time. I don't how anyone writes a book while they are working a full-time job with real responsibilities and deadlines. I assume some people do it, but I can't imagine how. So I think to some extent there is an intrinsic problem in that the people who have time to write, don't have time to do real work, at least while they are writing. Nowadays my time is filled with sales, marketing, contracts, writing, editing, and programming, quite a bit of programming. Guess what I don't have time to do? I don't have time to write. Actually, I do. I force myself to get one article a week out, but it is almost always an interview. My design book, which has been on the back burner for years, gets no attention. My blog gets no attention.
Last fall I interviewed Ward Cunningham, a thought-leader who has started a lot of snowballs rolling that ended up being rather large. When I asked Ward about wikis, one of the things he mentioned is that wikis let people who do real work have a voice. Ward said:
What you get as a wiki reader is access to people who had no voice before. The people to whom we are giving voice have a lot of instinct about what it's like to write, and ship, a computer program. Our industry honors certain traditions in its publications. If you want to contribute to a scientific journal, for example, you should be peer reviewed. Part of peer review is that you're familiar with all the other literature. And the other literature somehow that spiraled off into irrelevance. What was being written about programming didn't match what practicing programmers felt. With wiki, practicing programmers who don't have time to master the literature and get a column in a journal that's going to be read have a place where they could say things that are important to them. The wiki provides a different view.
What Ward said about wikis I also find true of weblogs. Weblogs give voice to programmers doing real work. I honestly am not sure how some bloggers find so much time to write, either, but I'm glad they do, because I learn from them. When I met you at the Jini Meet-up, Rick, I kept hearing you talk about how this XP practice or that agile practice doesn't scale or doesn't work well in your situation. You sounded like one of these people that Ward was talking about, people who know what it's like to write and ship a program, and that's why I wanted to bring you in as a blogger. You have contributed some reality checks on some popular, trendy ideas. It helps us figure out how to apply those ideas.
I'm not done with thought leaders, because I like that Kent Beck and Martin Fowler and Scott Meyers and Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt and Grady Booch and Erich Gamma and whoever else are out there building castles in the air. They give me lots to think about. But I also like to balance what those guys say with input from people who may be less famous, people who spend their days building real buildings on the ground that have to survive hurricanes and earthquakes. I learn from them as well.
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