I need to preface this comment by saying I work for neither a large corporation nor a small business, nor do I write code... hopefully this won't invalidate my response for either having an ulterior motive or being uninformed.
That said, I find Paul Graham's first point, that amateurs do better work than professionals, to be amazingly poorly defended. (This isn't to say that I disagree with the point, just with Graham's argument.) He digs his own grave by bringing up the "average pro vs. average amateur" discussion in paragraphs 14-17. Walker's argument seems to be that companies, by their nature, turn lower limits (e.g. An article can't be any WORSE than "standard x") into upper limits (e.g. An article needn't be any BETTER than "standard x"), whereas, because amateurs aren't held to any such standards, the best of them are free to exceed "standard x" in writing or what-have-you.
That's all fine and good for the best of them, but what about everyone else? One of the benefits of the business model is that it lets average writers (continuing with the example of writing vs. blogging) still productively contribute to the newspaper. Furthermore, it has an investment in training these average writers to be better writers, and it puts them in close contact with better writers. It's pleasant to imagine that you're one of the best and brightest writers (or programmers, or, again, "job-x"ers) in the world, and maybe more slashdot readers are above average than the general population (although I realize as I type this that by definition the general population clusters around the average mark) but what if you're wrong? If you're wrong, which is to say, if you're average, and you go into business, you can still get a paycheck. If you're average, and you put your faith in Graham's argument and try and start a business, you'll be quickly run off the road by the best and brightest.
We see the best amateur software projects, but, as Graham mentions in his discussion of bar-room commentators, we rarely see mediocre amateur software projects, because they're worse than both the brilliant amateur and the reliably-middling professional jobs. As an example of this, had Graham's piece, a thoroughly mediocre amateur piece of writing, been written by a talented amateur, it wouldn't have these horrific logical gaps, and had it been produced by a reliably-mediocre organization like the New York Times, the 25-year-old copy-editors Graham blames for mangling his work would have never let a word like "ones's" (at the end of the paragraph beginning "The big advantage of investment...") get published.
Slashdot Mirror
I need to preface this comment by saying I work for neither a large corporation nor a small business, nor do I write code... hopefully this won't invalidate my response for either having an ulterior motive or being uninformed.
That said, I find Paul Graham's first point, that amateurs do better work than professionals, to be amazingly poorly defended. (This isn't to say that I disagree with the point, just with Graham's argument.) He digs his own grave by bringing up the "average pro vs. average amateur" discussion in paragraphs 14-17. Walker's argument seems to be that companies, by their nature, turn lower limits (e.g. An article can't be any WORSE than "standard x") into upper limits (e.g. An article needn't be any BETTER than "standard x"), whereas, because amateurs aren't held to any such standards, the best of them are free to exceed "standard x" in writing or what-have-you.
That's all fine and good for the best of them, but what about everyone else? One of the benefits of the business model is that it lets average writers (continuing with the example of writing vs. blogging) still productively contribute to the newspaper. Furthermore, it has an investment in training these average writers to be better writers, and it puts them in close contact with better writers. It's pleasant to imagine that you're one of the best and brightest writers (or programmers, or, again, "job-x"ers) in the world, and maybe more slashdot readers are above average than the general population (although I realize as I type this that by definition the general population clusters around the average mark) but what if you're wrong? If you're wrong, which is to say, if you're average, and you go into business, you can still get a paycheck. If you're average, and you put your faith in Graham's argument and try and start a business, you'll be quickly run off the road by the best and brightest.
We see the best amateur software projects, but, as Graham mentions in his discussion of bar-room commentators, we rarely see mediocre amateur software projects, because they're worse than both the brilliant amateur and the reliably-middling professional jobs. As an example of this, had Graham's piece, a thoroughly mediocre amateur piece of writing, been written by a talented amateur, it wouldn't have these horrific logical gaps, and had it been produced by a reliably-mediocre organization like the New York Times, the 25-year-old copy-editors Graham blames for mangling his work would have never let a word like "ones's" (at the end of the paragraph beginning "The big advantage of investment...") get published.