

Herd Thither, Me Hither (revised) - raganwald
http://braythwayt.com/2013/11/27/herd-thither-me-hither.html#revised

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wpietri
For those unfamiliar, a good framework for thinking about these choices is the
_Crossing the Chasm model_. A brief summary: you can divide people up into
innovators (will try new tech because it's shiny), early adopters (will try
new tech because they are willing to work to gain a major advantage), early
majority (will use the new thing if it's better, safe, and easy), late
majority (will use the new thing if everybody else is), and laggards (death
before novelty). The "chasm" bit of the title is that a lot of tech dies
between early adopters and early majority because both the product and the
marketing have to change to suit the new audience.

I think a "why the shiny thing is unsafe" essay is reasonable from two groups:
1) early majority types telling other early majority types that no, tech X
isn't ready for them yet; and 2) people who have been early adopters for other
tech, and are investigating whether their particular needs match the benefits
of this tech.

I like this essay, and I think it's analysis of people self-justifying is
really good. But I think it's a little over-contemptuous of people going with
the herd. Animals herd for a reason: there's safety in numbers.

By nature, I'm not herd-oriented. E.g., I'm typing this on a Linux laptop. And
when Raganwald was selling Macs, I was doing NeXT development, because it was
clearly better tech than PCs, and also way better than Macs. I felt pretty
smug, and we wrote some great software. But in a practical sense it was a
stupid choice: NeXT only got uptake in a few niche markets, and Jobs promptly
fucked all of those people over when he reclaimed his throne at Apple.
Commercially, all of the people who chose Windows-based systems over the NeXT
platform made the right choice.

If you want to reach the herd, I think you have to, as _Crossing the Chasm_
says, use the innovators and the early adopters to build a beachhead. So yes,
don't sell your novel tech to the early majority; they won't buy it. But
that's temporary. Dominance among the innovators gives you access to the early
adopters. Dominance among the early adopters gives you access to the early
majority.

~~~
fogus
> innovators (will try new tech because it's shiny)

That doesn't sound like innovation to me. It sounds more like fashion. Am I
reading too strictly into definitions? (I assume that I am, since I'm not
familiar with Crossing the Chasm)

~~~
wpietri
Great question. Any fault in my post is surely with my quick summary. The
model is complex, and goes beyond tech:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusions_of_innovations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusions_of_innovations)

I describe the innovator group that way because high-tech early adopters will
often try a new tech just because it's an exciting new tech.

I don't think that's fashion, exactly, because those people are only 2-3% of
the market, but you could look at it as fashion within that group. A good
recent example is Google Glass. Some people surely bought it to be seen as
cool by other tech adopters, but I know a bunch of people who bought it just
to see what the hell it did, to experiment with it. Ditto for low-cost 3D
printers.

I think the name "innovators" pre-dates applying the model to high-tech types,
and outside of tech I think the term is more clearly appropriate, because tech
folks have an especially strong fondness for novelty.

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qznc
Very esoteric title, but the message got me thinking about my personal
marketing crusades.

For example the D programming language. While it actually targets C++, selling
it to C++ programmer is tough, because they are unlikely to switch. It is
probably easier to sell to people researching Scala vs Clojure vs Go.

~~~
asdasf
That is a perfect example, I think focusing so heavily on trying to target C++
users has limited D's success. That also gets me thinking about how the other
big problem with D is actually a similar issue. Keeping the compiler closed
source means D basically does not exist outside of the popular platforms (the
herd). People outside of the herd are the ones most likely to try a new
language, but they don't have the option. The notion of "we'll just support
the major platforms since that's where most potential users are" isn't
necessarily true, most of those people are not in fact potential users at all.

~~~
andralex
There are two open-source D compilers that track the reference front-end,
which is also open source. (Thanksgiving wish: this misinformation will cease
to exist one day.)

~~~
asdasf
I am aware (although only gdc was around back when I cared, and it didn't
compile), but it still poses the problem. People expect to be able to download
and use the "main" or "primary" implementation or whatever you want to call
it. The reason I don't use D is because when I wanted to try it, I couldn't.

~~~
qznc
The official download page lists all three compilers for all major operating
systems.

[http://dlang.org/download.html](http://dlang.org/download.html)

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asdasf
Getting somewhat off topic, but from the article he's referencing:

>Top-notch functional programming

What exactly is it that makes people who have never done functional
programming think javascript offers "top-notch" functional programming? It
offers the bare minimum to be able to do functional programming, but that is a
far cry from "top-notch".

~~~
chromatic
_What exactly is it that makes people who have never done functional
programming think javascript offers "top-notch" functional programming?_

They've heard that JavaScript has first-class functions, which they've heard
of. They've also heard that JavaScript is like Scheme, which they've also
heard of.

