Daniel's Blog

Three Little Letters

Posted by Daniel Lyons Fri, 14 Sep 2007 06:15:00 GMT

Someone on Reddit shared the most cogent summary of DHH’s philosophy. Love him or hate him, he deserves most of the credit for Rails (and indirectly much of the recent furor over DSLs), and understanding him will get you far in understanding those things. He’s also a Web 2.0 personality of no small importance.

It must be very gratifying to be David Heinemeier Hansson. After all, he’s entered that quite small group of people in the programming world who are known by their very own TLA. Designers and programmers of various stripes regard him very highly. Of course, this has only happened to three or four other geeks in all of time: ESR, RMS, DJB, and maybe EWD. In short, it only happens to blowhards.

DHH is a blowhard and you know it. 37signals’ products tend to be so “opinionated” as to be anti-user. Lots of people have walked away from Basecamp because part of having “vision” is apparently knowing and understanding your tool so well that no customer—no matter how much they use your tool—can possibly have a suggestion for you that you should even bother responding to with anything less than total contempt. Want some proof? There’s even a hilarious parody of 37signals’ blog.

Without a bunch of highlighter, let’s skip to the point: Lots of companies achieve success, make a blog, and rant about their awesome formula. Lots of fans arrive, read the blog, and start to copy the formula. You shouldn’t, though, because mixed in with “good” companies are bad companies with crap products. They’re just as successful. DHH believes that his formula is perfect and it’ll work for everyone, but he has no way to know which parts of his formula are brilliant and which parts are bullshit. If you start your company ready to say “fuck you” to the users, well, you might be successful, but you might not.

I’m really glad someone as surly as myself managed to start a company and get invited to talks to put up slides that say “fuck you” on them. Really. It makes me feel really good about myself. The cult behavior is what’s pissing me off. Hating users is not a road to success. It’s an obstacle to success that, in DHH’s case, was apparently not enough of one to stop it from happening.

37signals used to have a great page comparing the cost of Basecamp to their competitors. The competition, if they’re still around at all, was charging hundreds or thousands of dollars for comparable or less functionality with really bad UI. Basecamp showed up and for $20 you could use it and it was easy. Might the real take-away here be the oldie-but-goodie “find a niche and fill it?” Do I need to point out the utterly missing runaway success with their other programs, largely warmed-over versions of Basecamp with different UIs? Does anybody really use Backpack? I’m sure twenty people will show up to point out that they do, but it’s hardly the millions who are using Basecamp. Campfire? Writeboard? Please.

So let’s be serious. They’re a one-hit wonder and their success has everything to do with capitalism and nothing to do with their cult of personality. That may sound depressing, but it should be liberating. You don’t need to drink any kool-aid. You just need to find a niche and fill it. You can be the biggest asshole in the world, and you’ll still get stinking rich. If you play your cards right, you too can be reduced to just three little letters.

Just be sure to give DKL some the credit when that happens.

Edit: comments are closed. Please see my commenting policy, my response to another troll on Reddit, and think about why you wanted to waste your time insulting someone on their blog when you could just get one of your own. Thank you.