Sep 142011
There exist two good reasons to build a piece of software:
- Someone needs it
- Someone wants it
While reading In The Plex there are a number of times where Brim and Page seem to rub the majority of people the wrong way. This has been a major aspect to the company’s history and sticks out in my mind at almost every turning point.
Their difference in viewing life seems to frequently defy commonly accepted truths and carries a sense of certainty in things that others deem impossible. It is in this segregation from commonly sought after goals, such as money or fame, that they are able to truly innovate. They don’t read the latest research papers and implement the theoretically explained algorithms. Instead, they create brilliantly insightful algorithms around real-world data.
My takeaway from this is that I see too many people working on projects simply because they’ve been told to work on them. They might not find the product useful or believe anyone wants it, but they desire a paycheck at the end of the day. Certainly that’s a reasonable expectation to have of the software you pour yourself into, but those ideals will always be an obstacle to both fulfilling a passionate love of software engineering and creating truly remarkable applications. Software isn’t just about what can be done today, its about creating the tools needs to build a better tomorrow.
