Re: OT: open source attitude on advice
On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 01:00:01PM -0500, Neil Watson wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 09:51:56AM -0800, Rob Reid wrote:
> >Commercial programmers (in most cases) try to produce whatever
> >consumers want.
>
> Being jaded, I would rephrase that to:
> Commercial programmers (in most cases) try to produce whatever they
> THINK consumers want.
Dude, it's so much worse than that.
Commercial programmers (in most cases) try to produce whatever the
marketing people THINK consumers want because they heard something once
about a guy in Florida who wanted an animated paperclip.
(Current $DAYJOB involves running the development side of a product
produced for one, and exactly one, customer. As this customer has nuclear
weapons*, we try to keep them happy. You'd think figuring out what they
want would be easy, but I'm not allowed to talk directly to the customer --
I have to go through the sales group, which puts their own asinine spin on
everything. BUT I'M NOT BITTER OR ANYTHING)
-roy
* legal ones, of course