Writely

I tried this 10 months ago & did not find it useful, but it was promsing.
Looks pretty cool now.

paul graham railsconf 2006

the power of the marginal
california has an advantage with its climate because there is more marginal space
the only business woz and jobs had was building blue boxes --- a business with the rare characteristics of being both illegal and unprofitable
evaluating a field :: what are its tests like? how hard are they to hack?
look for overlap between leaders and practitioners
how much you should worry about being an outsider depends on the quality of the insiders
where the insiders are corrupt, don't worry
if it is corrupt enough, the test is an anti-test

"even a dumb man is considered wise if he remains silent" old testament
may have worked for bronze age goat herders in palestine

if you want to score big, focus on the margin of the margin

Martin Fowler at RailsConf 2006

opinionated :: focus on limited problem space

drive toward simplicity :: facilitated by focus

conversational approach :: move developers from closet to customer

• often focus can be accelerated by shooting, then aiming. show the customer something -- is this what you want?
• observational approach to requirements -- see what the customer actually does
  

ruby :: not the same level of uniformity as lisp and smalltalk, but provides a better foundation for dealing with computing resources as they lay

post modern computing :: just as buildings composed of modules don't live, software built from a uniform paradigm don't live

• ruby says: dive in a deal with the mess in the world -- be the glue
• ron jefferies pointed out that becasuse it deals with more messy realities of the real world, a payrole system is more complex than an operating system