I call bullshit.

This article was so full of it, the more I read, the more I had to change into higher waders.

As I normally do when responding to a post, I started pulling out the statements I wanted to respond to, highlighting them, and putting my response below. After 10 minutes, I had the Magna Carta. This is simply too much wrong with this article to respond in the usual way.

So instead, I'll just say this...

Get this and get this good, fellow hackers: When anyone says "analysis" or "requirements gathering" is bullshit, there can only be one reason why: they don't know how to do it.

Sure, there are antecdotes and case studies of people building great software without talking to users first, but they are in the extreme minority, and anyone proposing doing this all the time is doing a disservice to his readers.

In order to find out what people need from software, you don't "grill" them, "interview" them, or "role play" (whatever that means). You get with them and "live their lives" and suffer with them, understanding what they must accomplish, how they must do it, and what's stopping them now. How do you do this? Any way you can. Change uniforms and shovel shit with them. Do their job for a day. Put them together in a room, feed them, give them beer (optional), and get them to bitch about it. Identify every single data element related to their tasks. Connect tasks and data to objectives (You may find that half of what they already do is a waste of time.)

In short, do whatever it takes to find out what you need to know to develop your software. This is hard work. Hardly anyone does it now, and relatively few have ever done it. Steve Yegge certainly hasn't. If he had, the data in this rant would have been very different.

Sorry, Steve, I normally enjoy your columns. Do us all a favor and don't say something can't be done because you've never done it. Next time, write about something you've already done. Then we can all resume learning from you again.

Having lived and breathed (and somehow survived) in the enterprise environment that employs the vast majority of the programmers out there, I can agree with that proposition whole-heartedly.

Yes, 99.9% of the software that gets written is mediocre at best. A shockingly large proportion of it is downright abysmal, but most of it is mediocre. Thankfully, we don't get to see most of that software since it is safely locked away inside the mega-corporations that pay hordes of programmers to write it.

This is a great idea, and the real way to address the problem Steve suggests: Become the business.

However, the majority of your criticism of Steve is way off base, because the methods he describes are not strawmen, but the actual methods described in most of the software engineering requirements books. If you look at Karl Wiegers book, Software Requirements, which is considered by many to be a leading reference on the subject, it describes a process much like the one Yegge criticizes.

A top story for almost two days was a screenshot of a hapless fellow complaining about mistakenly ordering the 'I Am Rich' iPhone app. (It got 59 story upvotes, and this was in addition to other news coverage of the app.) The thread had multiple highly-rated comments that were no more insightful than "ha, don't click 'buy' if you don't want to buy". (Two of those had over 20 net upvotes.)

The idiot hordes have arrived and are breeding like rabbits through mutual upvotes. Death of News.YC predicted; news at 11.

I've had people approach me saying things like "I want to make this great site. It would allow people to buy and sell things online and the prices would be determined by auction and we could have user feedback on the sales, you know, kinda like Ebay". They came up with the idea (and by came up with, I mean saw Ebay) and it was my job to develop the site and figure out why people would use it over Ebay. They had done their part, but when I said no, it was in their mind because I was a crappy programmer.

Actually, it shows you as a go-getter, exactly the type of person I'd want working for me.

The biggest difference between the top 1% and everyone else? They never stop selling.

I've done the same thing as OP and it works. Better yet, if you have office space, invite your neighbors over for wine and cheese (or beer and soda) Friday after work. Socialize and share. They may not become customers that day, but when they (or someone they know) needs what you offer, who do you think they're gonna call?