The cruel shoes joke is funny because many women would rather have shoes that mutilate their feet but look good/make them look good than something that is average but as comfortable as slippers.
As far as Steve Martin, I think that he is a great comedian and actor. His style is uniquely his own and I applaud him for that.
Actually, Steveâs early jobs (such as wandering around Knottâs Berry Farm singing and playing) are pretty interesting. He is an amazing banjo player too.
However, does âconsistently goodâ lead to âgreatnessâ. Not necessarily. âGreatnessâ is too subjective a term. Being consistently good in a tough field (like parenting) weighs in more for me than being consistently good in some other field.
Is âgreatnessâ defined by numbers of adorers? By talent that no one notices? By doing good in a world that puts the wrong things on a pedestal? By being really good at something hard?
Kind of an imprecise premise.
Very interesting post. I enjoyed the read.
I think Steve nailed it. If youâre consistently striving to be good, youâre doing more than most people are (since most people tend to stagnate without external motivation). This kind of reminds me of âCareer Calculusâ by Eric Sink. If you are improving a little bit every day, youâre better than average already.
On a side note, The product problems that bringâs The Jerk upward journey to an end is a prophetic forshadowing of the coffee cup lawsuits that were to follow in the real worldâŚ
Ok,
âI live in Pennsylvania. I donât need to be a great programmer, just better than the Amish.â
Now that was funny!
Kudos Robert!
I donât know how much you follow football, but look at Eli Manning. When he isnât out there trying to win every single game by himself, he plays consistently and the Giants actually win games.
Reminds me of playing baseball as a kid. Youâd have the kids whoâd bat consistently âgoodâ - say, good enough to get on base consistently without sacrificing the runner on first - but never seriously inspired fear in the other team. And then youâd have that kid who would strike out 2 out of 3 at-bats, but when he connected heâd knock it out of the park. That kid made you sweat if you were playing outfield, and curse if you were pitching.
You need good. You need a lot of good. If you donât have a solid base who know their limits and are willing to play just below them, youâll flame out too fast.
But you want great. Just enough to push you past what your opponents are expecting. Whether itâs the only kid who has a shot at clearing the bases, or the only guy who has a shot at producing working code by the deadline.
Good puts bread on the table. Great puts sugar in your tea.
Good rehashes tired old metaphors. Great comes up with new ones. :-
I still donât get the cruel shoes joke, despite the explanations that women wear uncomfortable shoes for fashion. It seems maybe a bit tragic or perhaps ironic, but not funny. Then again, Iâm with the guy who said that Steve Martin wasnât funny 30 years ago and isnât funny today.
I donât know if worse is better but I do believe worse is more popular. Particularly in technology fields it seems that every time there is a choice between two standards, the âworstâ one seems to win out. Perhaps that is because the worst choice is easier. Maybe the saying should be âeasy is better?â
Cruel Shoes really goes deeper than just âwomen suffer in high-heeled shoesâ. It touches everyoneâs desires to try something forbidden⌠something that they know could hurt them, but that they must experience for themselves. And there is always someone there enticing you into doing exactly what you know you shouldnât beâŚ
In my opinion⌠being good takes discipline, knowledge, and persistence. Being great takes all of these things and the addition of creativity.
I like Shog9âs analogy âGood puts bread on the table. Great puts sugar in your tea.â. Good is what I hope to do to pay my bills day-to-day⌠great is what I aspire to become by striking out on my own someday.
Personally, i find the cruel shoes story funny because⌠simply, Carlo says âunless, youâd like to try the cruel shoesâ because he knows the second woman is likely to buy them. The funny part is that the fact that the woman would buy them, and the next woman, and the one after that.
As Krusty the clown says, âItâs not just good. Itâs good enough!â
Seriously, worse isnât better, itâs just survives better.
Capitalism is the clearest example of this. Everything becomes Wal-marted.
The first iteration of a new product may not be feature complete (e.g. HDTV),but is well made. Successive, cheaper iterations become successively more shoddy (but still âgood enoughâ) until they are just good enough to sell and little more. At this point, we say a product has become âcommoditized.â
The system creates ever rising levels of mediocrity. Yet, this seems to work better than any other system. Sometimes worse is better.
Successful strategy, yes. Intuitive, No
How to make money in software and how to explain a lot of the software that we see every year.
1.Only put in enough features to make an existing user want to upgrade. Anything more and you are throwing effort away without compensation. They were going to upgrade anyway. Milk it!
2.Only build your product marginally better than the competition. If you build a conceptually much better product then all your cards are on the table and others can learn from your effort and bite you back with less development effort.
3.If you have a large installed base, you may even lag behind the competition as long as the pain point to continue using your software is less than the pain to learn something new or invest in a rivalâs solution.
4.It is much easier to be an also ran in a booming market than creating a new market.
During World War II the Germans made incredibly good aircraft. The messerschmidt and fockewulf to name two fighters. They were fast and probably the best in their class at the time. It also took a long time for a pilot to learn to fly them. On the other hand the Russians built simple klunky planes, but a pilot could be trained to fly them in a couple of weeks. So as the war on the Eastern front progressed the Germans lost their pilots faster than they could replace them. Even while they consistently shot down Russians. I the end the Russians won the air war because their equipment was worse than the Germans. This to my mind is a great example of worse is better in history.
in defense of Steve Martinâs absolutely atrocious presence in films over the lest decade or so, let me assert this: He doesnât care â he just wants the paycheck.
Heâs cashing in on his fame so that he can pursue his interest in contemporary art, experimental theater and young women.
The funny thing is (not âha haâ funny), if you donât get why âCruel shoesâ is funny, Iâm not sure anyone could explain it to you, any more than you could explain âblueâ to someone who only saw in black, white and gray. The irony is almost precognitive.
Room for lots of comment:
Greshamâs law: bad money drives out good. The generalized case is that the lesser drives out the greater.
If we all stop trying to be better (something greater than Good), will we not devolve to cretins?
Each problem needs the best answer. So, if as either individual or group, we strive to be good âon averageâ over a timeâs worth of problems; do we not, by definition, make a bad for each problem?
Steve Jobs would certainly disagree. Appleâs success(?) is the measure.
A specific case of the good driving out the best: those with a mathematical mind understand that RDBMS datastores beat the crap out of flat files and xml and ⌠OTOH, most programmers never (certainly based on the majority of commenters on this blog) studied or, if they did got, databases while at university. Thus, bloated client-centric systems continue to breed. See recent Steve Yegge.
Striving for good is an oxymoron, kind of like happily married (in the words of Dr. McElhone). And consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds (or thereabouts).
I see a correlation with, âitâs good enoughâ; thus the rise in use of what the BileBlog calls open sores. The smarter than average call BS on just about each piece of this rather large pie; but we Eloi keep eating.
Is there not a correlation in the decline of USofA as measured by school tests scores, standard of living, health level, etc. and the willingness to be âgood enoughâ?
and so on.
One counter point to this whole idea is to âaim highâ. If you succeed at something unlikely the rewards are great. If you fail itâs because the problem was too hard in the first place (or atleast you can get away with that answer).
A good example of a field for aiming high would be Cryptography. Because if someone can break a good security system (and a real one at that), everyone wins (including the security experts) because breaking the unbreakable opens up the field again.
One field that should fall in the aim high category but empirically doesnât is the game industry. Most games that aim high are quite lackluster and those that really do the best are the ones that are consistently good (polished)
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2004/04/19/heinous.html
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2003/08/05/incrementalists_completionists.html
Thanks for posting those, Ron. In addition to Coding Horror, Rands is one of my favorite writers on the subject of software development. I appreciate those articles because they sum up the opposing ideologies of software engineering so succinctly. I consider myself an Incrementalist but I indulge in as many Completionist tendencies as is possible. I want to deliver the best product I can, but I also realize that people arenât paying me for software, theyâre paying me for making their lives easier or giving them a more powerful tool. Software that hasnât shipped isnât helping anyone. Any developer who has never had to cut features or ship with known bugs has lived a charmed life.
I think âworse is betterâ holds true because it is more realistic. Computers are so precise and deterministic, we are tempted to believe we can write software that is absolutely flawless. The problem is that the real world has other plans for our perfect conceptual models and our dreams of elegant code. I think one of the hardest things in software development is knowing when to say âwhenâ. Even the best programmers can get stuck in the trap of âbetterâ. In fact, I think itâs only the best programmers who get stuck because the lousy programmers arenât aware of their own inadequacies or donât care enough to overcome them.
A (long) quote from Linus Torvalds on the subject: âNobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small trivial project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, youâll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision. So start small, and think about the details. Donât think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesnât solve some fairly immediate need, itâs almost certainly over-designed. And donât expect people to jump in and help you. Thatâs not how these things work. You need to get something half-way useful first, and then others will say âhey, that almost works for meâ, and theyâll get involved in the project.â