Working on resume. Last one I wrote (approx. 3 years ago)
was
something like 10 pages long, mostly because I felt some
need
to explain the context in which I did all of those strange
things.
I figured that the more people could read and know, the
fewer
dumb questions I'd have to fend, the fewer pointless
interviews,
etc. Of course, no more than 3-5 people actually read the
thing,
but they were entertained, and I did get a job (albeit not
the
one I was looking for). So this time the plan is to
hypertext it:
short summary with links to juicy details. Maybe I'll get it
out
today; or maybe I'll get my new basketball goal set up.
I was reading Andrew Leonard's Salon piece on how IBM wised
up to open source, and saw a link to an old essay by
Richard Gabriel, called
"The
Rise of Worse-Is-Better". Gabriel talks about two
approaches:
- The MIT Approach, characterized by the phrase "the right
thing", which aspires to be correct, consistent, and
complete.
- The NJ Approach, which favors simplicity over
consistency
and completeness. (A better name for this might be "Simple
uber Alles", or even KISS.)
The core argument is that simple systems are more
accessible,
more adaptable, have better survival characteristics, and
therefore proliferate widely, whereas "right thing" systems
are harder to build and maintain, are more expensive, etc.
This much is pretty straightforward, and plenty of examples
pop to mind. However, the interesting point is the assertion
that people willingly adapt to the simpler systems rather
than waiting for the "right thing" systems to adapt to them.
We see evidence of this all the time, but it's hard to shake
the conviction that "better" must really be better. I used
to
work in the typesetting industry, and one of the things I
worked on there was trying to automate the aesthetic rules
of fine advertising typography -- kerning, hung punctuation,
river avoidance, staggered rags, etc. -- but in the long run
such concerns turned out to be irrelevant. It turned out
that
desktop publishers were so happy just to get their pages
instantly, saving them trekking to the type shop and paying
out a small fortune, that they were willing to forego a lot
of finery.
But the arguments persist, ad infinitum, and they're hard to
settle -- partly because nobody really argues for worse, the
winners of "worse-is-better" just do it.