Click here to show or hide the menubar.

Home >  Archive >  2012 >  June >  24

Previous / Next

RSS feed for Scripting News
This site contributes to the scripting.com community river.


Scripting News -- It's Even Worse Than It Appears.

About the author

A picture named daveTiny.jpgDave Winer, 56, is a software developer and editor of the Scripting News weblog. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School and NYU, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

"Dave was in a hurry. He had big ideas." -- Harvard.

"Dave Winer is one of the most important figures in the evolution of online media." -- Nieman Journalism Lab.

10 inventors of Internet technologies you may not have heard of. -- Royal Pingdom.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

8/2/11: Who I Am.

Contact me

scriptingnews2mail at gmail dot com.

Twitter

My sites
Recent stories

Recent links

My 40 most-recent links, ranked by number of clicks.

My bike

People are always asking about my bike.

A picture named bikesmall.jpg

Here's a picture.

Calendar

June 2012
Sun
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30

May   Jul

Warning!

A picture named warning.gif

FYI: You're soaking in it. :-)


A picture named xmlMini.gif
Dave Winer's

A message from developers to users Permalink.

On behalf of all developers I want to say something to all users.

We need you.

Without users, there can't be any software.

Because, as we know, software is a process.

And the process of software, at some point, is driven by users.

The job of a developer is to seed the process.

To say, here -- I think this is a good idea.

Then it's up to the users to agree or not.

But it goes way beyond that.

Developers, when we do our most appreciated work, are paving cow paths. Making things we know people want work better.

So the process is:

1. Users do something.

2. Users do other things.

3. They do more of some things than others.

4. Patterns emerge.

5. You see which way to go.

6. You make that way easy.

I think all good developers know this, at a visceral level. But the longer we do this, the clearer it is.

There wasn't always a Mother's Day or a Father's Day. At some point we woke up and realized, hey, we need these people. And we appreciate them. So let's give them a day.

So we need to feel, imho, the same way for people who use our software.

I'm feeling this very clearly now, as the uptake begins for my latest works. The users' presence is being felt. They're showing me things I need to look at that I wasn't looking at before. The feedback loop is kicking in.



© Copyright 1997-2012 Dave Winer. Last build: 6/24/2012; 4:22:04 PM. "It's even worse than it appears."

RSS feed for Scripting News


Previous / Next