Paul Graham Says It Time To Start A Tech Company

I think I agree.

http://www.paulgraham.com/badeconomy.html

Here are some of his reasons:

1. "Technology progresses more or less independently of the stock market. So for any given idea, the payoff for acting fast in a bad economy will be higher than for waiting."

2. "It's not necessarily a problem if customers feel pinched: you may even be able to benefit from it, by making things that save money."

3. "Everyone knows you're supposed to buy when times are bad and sell when times are good. But of course what makes investing so counterintuitive is that in equity markets, good times are defined as everyone thinking it's time to buy. You have to be a contrarian to be correct, and by definition only a minority of investors can be."

It's a great post.

The Chevy Volt Sounds LIke A Step In The Right Direction

There have been some announcements about the Chevy Volt. I was going to post these comments to that article, but it appears that the site is not working.

I'm pretty excited about this car. A few commenters to that article have pointed out a lot of the negatives about GM. It's true GM has made glaringly obvious wrong choices at just about every turn, but it seems like they might be on the right track with this car. It's amazing how excited people got over the Prius when it was and continues to be just a gas vehicle with a lot of moving parts. Toyota blew the Prius by not giving it a plug in all electric mode. What a waste, and yet people got very excited about it. The Chevy Volt promises to be something different. It is primarily electric and sounds like it relies on a mechanically simpler design than the Prius. By not having the gas engine mechanically connected to the drive train there are several advantages.

1. Mechanical simplicity.
2. It opens up a variety of power generation options in the future (efficient turbines, fuel cells, etc.).

I think the Chevy Volt looks like a huge step in the right direction and GM should be commended for taking it. It would be nice if they had the gumption to have pressed for higher CAFE standards instead of fighting them. Imagine if one American car company had stepped up and said, "we can do better" instead of cowering behind government protectionism. Give us a proud moment GM!

Justification

It seems to me that people often doubt their good decisions and defend their bad ones. Where does the fear to be out front come from and where does the fear to be wrong come from?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear%2C_uncertainty_and_doubt

Why "Altar of Cruft"?

Necrobious and I write software and we like to talk about it. There is an endless stream of things to talk about related to software, but he and I often come back to a central theme...

Do you tear something up and start over or do you dig in and figure out what is there?

Software and the people that write it are unique in that they are forced more than most people to question the assumptions about what they are working on and inevitably other things in their lives constantly. By assumptions I mean all of the things that you take for granted while making a choice in life. Everything we do requires assumptions, from taking a single step to publishing a new piece of code.

So we have a lot to talk about and maybe we'll do some of it here.