Today a coworker and I spent the better part of the afternoon discussing the ideals we have for business, code, religion, life, etc. As the discussion began to deepen and widen we started to become amazed at the similarities of the foundations for all of these seemingly different arenas in life.
Take a few excerpts from the Unix Philosophy for example:
- Small is beautiful
- Make each program do one thing well
- Prototype as soon as possible
As I read through those and others examples in the Unix philosophy I couldn’t believe the similarities between a philosophy for an operating system and those that founded silverorange and many other small successful companies. Then it dawned on me that those principles and others seem to be pervasive throughout most effective things in our world.
Education
The most effective formal education I have received came in small groups [small is beautiful] learning one specific focused thing [do one thing well]. In the best of those small groups I started exercising the knowledge I had received very quickly and usually before I understood the knowledge. There was a certain level of understanding that only came out of applying the knowledge [prototype as soon as possible].
Religion
Pure Christianity is a perfect example of these three principles applied. Jesus picked twelve people to start Christianity. While the religion’s numbers grew quickly, believers would still meet in small groups of a dozen or so [small is good]. These small groups were charged to do one thing well, continue teaching and doing what Jesus said and did [do one thing well]. Early on Jesus sent out a small group to the towns and villages to heal and teach long before they understood all they needed to know [prototype as soon as possible]. I’m sure other religions have similarities in their founding. I merely used Christianity as it is the one that I am most familiar with.
Business
silverorange is a group of ten people [small is beautiful]. We decided early on we were going to do one thing, the web, and do it well [do one thing well]. When working on an ecommerce solution we often launch as soon as possible once the system has been built and had a first round of bug fixes done. This allows us to have real customers flowing through the site and the client processing real orders. The reality of the testing forces us to fix things on the fly quickly and efficiently. It also allows us to find errors we’d never have found during our own testing [prototype as soon as possible].
So what exactly are these things that seemingly run through all effective efforts in life? Is it possible to make a list of them?
Comments
Steven Garrity - April 22, 2003 12:55 am
This is something we’ve run into time and time again through our business: good code is good design is good business. The same ideas that make for good user-interface design can make for smart business decisions. Perhaps it is an attribute any trully fundamental good (honesty, respect, etc.) that it applies in many (any?) situations.
Stephen DesRoches - April 22, 2003 10:13 am
Those that claim they can do everything actually excel at nothing.
nathan - April 22, 2003 1:24 pm
The rest of the unix philosophy can be found in chapter 1 of the definitive book on the subject, The Art of Unix Programming by Eric Steven Raymond.
Also, I'm not so sure that [prototype as soon as possible]==[launching production sites with bugs].
Dan James - April 22, 2003 1:28 pm
"[prototype as soon as possible]==[launching production sites with bugs]." True Nathan. Maybe a better example could have been that in the early days us building non paid projects (such as the silverorange intranet) was putting our knowledge to practice early on.