With respect to the slide stop thing, this (sort of, if you squint right) represents a thing that I believe about the world, but also that I really hate:
An 80% solution that works is better than a 100% solution that doesn't.
Per the argument above, if we could take some poetic license, it's not saying "Glock won because it was better", it's actually saying something more like "Glock won because they're shittier, but still work".
The obvious parallel in my line of work is Javascript. Most programmers worth their salt will tell you that Javascript is a bullshit broken language with severe design flaws, or at least it was until the last few years or so. Yet it's by far the most ubiquitous language in software. Why? Same as the Glock, ease of use. To learn how to write C, or Java, or whatever, you need to download and install compilers, and dependency libraries, you need to understand differences in platforms, all that jazz. To learn how to write Javascript you need to press F12 on your keyboard while looking at this comment here in your browser right now.
Despite being a pretty shitty language all things considered (again, at least historically), Javascript won because they figured out a way to engineer out all of the complexity in getting started, and this freed up millions of people to learn and innovate. Just like a Glock!
Feels like most popular mainstream products started out being mocked as toy versions of "real professionals'" tools. Not sure that's bad though. Probably just illustrates that speed is an important feature. 80% today is better than 100% next week, especially if you can iterate on that and do 5 versions of the 80% thing by the time v1 of the 100% is done.
With respect to the slide stop thing, this (sort of, if you squint right) represents a thing that I believe about the world, but also that I really hate:
An 80% solution that works is better than a 100% solution that doesn't.
Per the argument above, if we could take some poetic license, it's not saying "Glock won because it was better", it's actually saying something more like "Glock won because they're shittier, but still work".
The obvious parallel in my line of work is Javascript. Most programmers worth their salt will tell you that Javascript is a bullshit broken language with severe design flaws, or at least it was until the last few years or so. Yet it's by far the most ubiquitous language in software. Why? Same as the Glock, ease of use. To learn how to write C, or Java, or whatever, you need to download and install compilers, and dependency libraries, you need to understand differences in platforms, all that jazz. To learn how to write Javascript you need to press F12 on your keyboard while looking at this comment here in your browser right now.
Despite being a pretty shitty language all things considered (again, at least historically), Javascript won because they figured out a way to engineer out all of the complexity in getting started, and this freed up millions of people to learn and innovate. Just like a Glock!
Feels like most popular mainstream products started out being mocked as toy versions of "real professionals'" tools. Not sure that's bad though. Probably just illustrates that speed is an important feature. 80% today is better than 100% next week, especially if you can iterate on that and do 5 versions of the 80% thing by the time v1 of the 100% is done.