Michael Richard Murphy

• Single
• Empty house
• Job
• ColdFusion
• Free time lunch

I just finished Hackers & Painters Big Ideas From The Computer Age by Paul Graham. For those of you not familar, Graham was the co-founder of Viaweb, the web’s first online e-commerce store generator. Graham and Robert Morris sold Viaweb to Yahoo! in 1998. Hackers & Painters is a collection of Graham’s essays on topics ranging from the education system to the ideal programming language.

I like Graham’s essays because although his topics are wide in scope, he breaks it down in a manner that lets you know he’s really spent a lot of time thinking about it. Now I’m no Paul Graham but I think I spend an almost painful amount of time thinking about a variety of different things. It’s almost relaxing to read the thoughts of someone who thinks more than I do.

I’m not sure if it’s because this topic came at the end of the book so it’s freshest or because this is a big topic lately at work but there’s a paragraph or two that’s been stuck in my head since I read it. It’s in the essay titled Revenge of the Nerds under the Recipe heading. It’s about “best practices” and “standards”.

Graham suggests that managers push for the adoption of best practices and standard technology because they’re safe choices. Any company can fail at any given time. Graham proposes that failure of projects that use best practices aren’t viewed as failures of management but rather as failures of technology and the industry that chose it (at least as far as those managers are concerned).

Don’t get me wrong, I think standards are a good thing. I try to construct all my sites using and validating against W3C standards. In the 1800s, it was nice to know that railroad tracks constructed in the West using a certain gauge would match up with those constructed starting in the East using the same guage. It’s also nice for those building skyscrapers to know that a steel beam will support the same weight whether it’s purchased from Metal X or Y Steel. I also think usability standards are also important. Web users have come to expect certain behaviors from certain web controls and it doesn’t help anyone to deviate from them.

On the other hand, I think Graham’s point is that innovation doesn’t come from safe choices or doing what everyone else does. This is where small companies excel. Maybe nobody told them things aren’t done a certain way or maybe they have nothing to lose. Graham quotes Erann Gat as saying that “what industry best practice actually gets you is not the best, but merely the average”. I don’t think any company can afford to be average. What do you think?

Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

I found this quote by C.S. Lewis is some recent reading and wanted to share it. I think its extremely timely.