Omit needless words When a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentence short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White, The Elements of Style Less, but better brevitysimplicityminimalism
The Web is Industrialized and I Helped Industrialize It An Article by Dave Rupert daverupert.com In our cultural obsession with billionaire entrepreneurs we laud new features more than the maintenance and incrementalism work of making old features better and more accessible. Maintenance looks like red minus signs in the spreadsheet. New features look like green plus signs. New features look better on our LinkedIn profiles. New features have that pizzazz, baby. When gardening, the building of planters and initial planting is a very short process. The majority of your time is spent nurturing and monitoring growth. I personally feel the struggle between maintainer work and new shiny feature work. I enjoy that new feature smell but I know that my day-to-day is more like a janitor on a boat mopping up someone else’s barf. In terms of metaphors, the gardening metaphor is certainly better, and it acknowledges that design and development still tend to be more creative endeavors. featuresnoveltywww