

The One Thing Every Software Engineer Should Know - bdotdub
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001177.html

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pg
The title made me think about what my answer would be. If there's one thing a
programmer should know, what is it? What is the most important thing I didn't
understand about programming when I started doing it?

My answer would be: that code should be seen not as a static thing, like the
answer to a math problem, but as an evolving effort to figure out the right
question to be the answer to; and that it should thus be written to be easy to
change.

~~~
te_platt
Coming up with "The" one thing a programmer should know seems too narrow a
question. Kind of like "What is your favorite song?" instead of "What are some
of your favorite songs?" A more interesting question might be "What things
would you emphasize to someone learning to program?" Flexibility? Precision?
My answer:

Every programmer should

1\. Learn C / Assembly - Understand how code interacts with hardware.

2\. Learn Lisp - Understand how ideas interact with code (and vice versa).

3\. Learn "O" notation - Understand algorithm complexity.

4\. Be clean and flexible.

~~~
qwph
5\. Write unit tests.

6\. Refactor mercilessly.

~~~
hendler
7\. sleep

8\. goto 1

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jpavlik
This is true of many industries. I have a friend who is a wonderful painter.
People who see his work tend to think highly of it. Problem is, he only knows
people who are "into art." He refuses to market his product. I kind of see a
parallel here. Great code is great art. The next step is presenting it to
people in a way which shows how it benefits them.

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bdfh42
An odd post from Jeff Atwood.

He (sort of) defines Marketing as:

    
    
       1. people understand what you're doing
       2. people become interested in what you're doing
       3. people get excited about what you're doing 
    

I would say it was more about people understanding what your product can do
for them, identifying it's value and thus parting with their money.

~~~
tom_rath
That's conflating marketing and advertising when they're actually two
different things. Think of marketing as the social component of design.

You wouldn't start coding without at least a rudimentary spec to guide what it
is you want to make, right? So why start designing your product without first
identifying what and for whom it is you are designing it?

Marketing is the process of identifying the target market for your product.
The "what it does" and "who it's for" part that a design needs if you're going
to "build something people want".

~~~
bdfh42
I think you nicely describe the planning part of marketing - but you have to
include the execution where you reach out to your target market. Advertising
(in all it's forms) is a crucial tool of marketing.

~~~
tom_rath
Except that advertising isn't marketing: It's advertising. They're different
things related to your business and should be handled differently.

I've run into a few companies who have painfully put an 'advertising guy' in
charge of their marketing department and it's not worked well (in my limited
sample). People are often great at advertising but couldn't put a decent
product strategy together to save their life (or job!).

You wouldn't put your web developer or icon designer in charge of system
administration or database scaling, right? Just like non-coders tend to lump
everything technical together as 'computer stuff', technical folks can fall
into the trap of lumping accounting, marketing, advertising, etc. into the
same batch as 'business stuff'. That path leads to madness.

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raganwald
I like the fundamental premise of his post, but I am (metaphorically)
downmodding it for presentation. His blog is beginning to look like it is
hosted by INET-WEB: <http://www.inet-web.com/creativeGeniusWebDevelopers.asp>.
Jokes aside, the danger I see here is that people might presume that when he
says "marketing," he means bombarding people with gaudy images and superficial
ornamentation.

That is __not __marketing. And furthermore, Jeff ought to know better. I
suggest he read this:<http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000834.html>.

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pxlpshr
Marketing vs. engineering is a common issue within a company and coming out of
a failed startup - NOT marketing enough was part of the problem. The product
did not sell itself, and many engineers mistakenly believe their product is
simply that GREAT. It's often not (and I don't mean this negatively because
engineering a GOOD product is very challenging to say the least), so be
careful not to drink too much of your own kool-aid.

Historically, consumption has been driven by brand appeal which is defined by
form (brand), function (product), and message (definition)... you'd be
surprised how many great products have bad brands and lost in translation.

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bprater
I may be one of the few hackers that loves marketing as much as I do
programming. I often split my reading time between both subjects. (And
personal development.)

For me, marketing is exactly like hacking code. Except that it's hacking for
humans! Even though humans tend to appear inconsistent, there are patterns
(just like in code!) that you can leverage.

The bottom line is this: my marketing allows me to do more of the programming
I love.

~~~
skmurphy
"We can debug relationships, but it's always good policy to consider the
people themselves to be features. People get annoyed when you try to debug
them." \--Larry Wall, second State of the Onion speech

"Identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably."
Chartered Institute of Marketing’s definition of Marketing

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sfamiliar
nice article, though i'm not sure that's the One Thing. my one thing would be
'know your audience'. that's part message and part usability. if you're
designing an app for engineers you design the ui very different than if you're
designing it to allow residents of the local retirement community to self-
schedule dinner deliveries.

that said:

if you're a resident in a company with a separate marketing team, it's key to
speak their language -- after all, the people you're going to be marketing
-to- is the marketing team. it's their job to get the message out, it's your
job to be sure they know what the message is, and what it isn't. make sure you
don't oversell, and let them know what would be overselling, and promote key
features internally; they'll get external through the firm's marketing wing.

if you're a startup, marketing is doubly important. if you can't sell a friend
on the idea of a product, you won't be able to sell the public. if your
startup idea is complex, you're going to have to find a way to make it
intelligible in ten seconds by picking the key features you want understood.
and everyone in a startup is on the marketing team, whether they like it or
not.

it's really worth it to read a book or two on marketing, if for no other
reason than to get the lingo down. i've found my suggestions much better
received when i could speak market-speak to the marketing team and sales team,
and promote effectively to civilians. i recommend 'the culting of brands' by
doug atkin as a good start.

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13ren
My guess at the one thing:

Aim at the use, not the truth. Think about what it's supposed to _do_. This is
helpful at all scales, from code snippet to a whole business. It's similar to
finding the right question, before finding the right answer. Sometimes, it
enables you to simplify dramatically.

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ii
I don't think that lack of marketing skills is a real problem. You could have
a friend that would do it for you. Think Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.

It's ok to be bad in marketing and good in hacking as long as you are not
alone.

~~~
codinghorror
er, yeah, but look at where Jobs ended up versus Woz. Sure, Woz did well, but
I can't help thinking he got taken advantage of along the way.

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yters
Part of the problem is that we look at marketing as being different than the
hack. However, marketing is just social hacking. A true hacker isn't confined
to one realm.

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carlio
If that were true then software teams would be make up of marketing gurus, who
code on the side.

~~~
astrec
I've never seen a software team that didn't need to improve the way it
communicated it's ideas to other areas of the business.

I've never seen another area of business that didn't need to improve the way
it communicated it's ideas to the software team.

Marketing isn't a dirty word. It isn't advertising. It's the art of
persuasion.

So, it is true, and in actual fact software teams would be made up of
developers who are highly effective communicators.

~~~
jonnytran
You're absolutely right. In an ideal world software developers could do their
art for the shear appreciation of it. But for practical reasons, we need money
and other resources to do that. It only makes sense to convince others how
valuable the craft is to them so that we are empowered to do it.

If smart engineers would just look at it as simply another problem to be
solved -- people hacking -- we'd be set.

