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Why Scripting Languages Matter
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Add Sticky NoteWhen Yahoo bought Viaweb, they asked me what I wanted to do. I had never liked
the business side very much, and said that I just wanted to hack. When I got to
Yahoo, I found that what hacking meant to them was implementing software, not
designing it. Programmers were seen as technicians who translated the visions
(if that is the word) of product managers into code.This seems to be the default plan in big companies. They do it because it
decreases the standard deviation of the outcome. Only a small percentage of
hackers can actually design software, and it's hard for the people running a
company to pick these out. So instead of entrusting the future of the software
to one brilliant hacker, most companies set things up so that it is designed by
committee, and the hackers merely implement the design....Big companies want to decrease the standard deviation of design outcomes
because they want to avoid disasters. But when you damp oscillations, you lose
the high points as well as the low. This is not a problem for big companies,
because they don't win by making great products. Big companies win by sucking
less than other big companies."
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