The Essence of Getting Real?

Published in Web Development on Saturday, February 18th, 2006

So, 37Signals launched Campfire this week, I've used it, and I think it's quite an excellent tool.

But quite possibly the most important thing that I am going to get from Campfire is this blog post: It just doesn’t matter. That really hits the idea home for me.

Let me preface - maybe it's a little late for that - well, let me just say that I haven't been to any of their conferences nor have I had the time to read their books and whatnot, but the whole concept just makes sense to me. I find that I am thinking more and more about "does this matter" and "is this really necessary"?

The concept has really boiled down into my programming too. Think about it: build core features for a site or application and leave the hooks there for adding modules later. If something really does matter, it can be tacked on when you know that it matters (this reminds me of Mint and it's Peppers).

Comments and Feedback

After dealing with multiple ERP systems, I'm hoping that some of those developers read this post. Getting a salesperson to utilize an ERP is hard enough (unless they are checking their commissions), but I've seen quote interfaces that making the act of quoting almost impossible, with all the stuff they add on.

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