“Real artists ship.” — Steve Jobs, 1983
I don’t write good all the time. I’m a little lazy and spell poorly, I don’t proofread enough, and if I had a genie to grant me a wish, one would be for an editor who I wasn’t related or married to. When I post a new article, I often see typos and while I do go back and fix them, I still push publish (or schedule), knowing things aren’t perfect.
This is a major departure from the “traditional” way of writing, when you write, have it reviewed, edit, re-write, re-edit, and so on. To many people, this is seen as ‘lazy’ writing, where we toss out things that are ‘good enough’ and call it a day, but the reality is that publishing promptly, be it writing or code, is what keeps up with the fast changing pace of news, information, and needs. But when it comes to writing, it falls a little bit under the aegis of “If you build it, they will come.” Or rather, if you don’t build it, they won’t come at all.
Publish or Perish
Well known to academia is the concept that if you don’t constantly publish works to sustain your career, you won’t have a career. The added pressure is that you have to publish fast so your information isn’t out of date before it hits the ground. The idea is that if you’re not publishing something then you’re not producing something, and you’re thereby sitting on your laurels. In software and blogging, this is actually important too! If you’re not producing code, or writing about it, you’re not demonstrating what you’ve learned. If you release code or write on your blog once a year, people will forget about you.
Release and Iterate
Also known as “Release early, release often,” this model of development makes important the concept of early and frequent releases. This necessitates people test, though, and developers respond quickly to issues reported by users. WordPress works by this model. Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, said “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” And if you look at many of the recent technological innovations (including the iPhone), version one was okay, but not great, and had a lot of bugs and annoyances.
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt
The biggest hold up to most of us pushing that publish button is FUD. What if we’re wrong? What if we’re saying things no one cares about? What if… We don’t want to be horribly embarrassed by that typo where we get their/they’re/there wrong, or worse, where we get all that technical information wrong. And it’s that place of fear, that home of uncertainty, that realm of doubt, that we stop. We don’t share what we know, we don’t explain what we think, and we turtle up.
Democratizing Publishing
The mission of the WordPress open source project is to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL, software. By letting any of us write what we want, we’re able to publish at will. That anyone can upload a book to Kindle or Apple and sell their works has changed the world. In many ways, it’s lowered the bar so anyone can sell anything which causes a dearth of quality. And yet, the stamp of quality products has never rested solely in the hands of ‘official’ publishers. Some of the best music we heard was from underground tapes made in basements. Some of the best stories we read were mimeographed in purple ink and handed out on the QT at fan conventions. All we’ve done here is take the barriers away and given you the freedom to say what’s on your mind.
Write the Change You Want to See
It takes bravery to post your thoughts, technical or personal, out there. You should only put out work you can stand behind, you should put the best work you can do out there, but you should be willing to post. You should be willing to release that code. You won’t grow, you can’t grow, if you don’t step up and put yourself out there.
Don’t worry. We know you’ll fix it.
