Essay 04 Amateur vs Professional Quality

Essay 04 Amateur vs Professional Quality

Does it really matter?

I have seen it too many times. In fact, I have hardly ever seen otherwise. My development environment as well as code style is that of an amateur hobbyist. Other people, even beginner coder, would go professional from the start. The question I'm asking is: Why would you want to handicap yourself to suffer professional quality programs when a simple hobbyist tool suffice?

Do you always get a race car for your daily drive? Do you always get the comprehensive tool cabinet when a tool bag gets the job done? Do you always get a professional studio when a sketchbook is handier? Why would you want to insist that a 4 GB Visual Studio is the only IDE you use, when a simple text editor will do? 

This kind of argument gets really bad. Adobe Studio Tools are definitely top quality, but as professional tools, they are rather expensive. GIMP and Krita are reasonable choices. Microsoft Office are great, too, but I used to just get a cheaper Microsoft Works since it gets the job done just fine. Oracle database is the best in the world, but most people can use MySQL well enough. Why would I want to use GCC with its long compile times, when TCC compiles near instantly?

As a hobbyist, coding should be fun. It doesn't matter that my hobbyist program compiled with TCC runs 3 times longer than a professional code compiled with GCC. The difference between 1 second and 1/3 of a second isn't that much. The fact is, that with TCC, I don't even bother doing the compilation step. There is an option to -run the source code directly! So, that is what I have been doing. It reminds me the easy of use of Perl. Perl is even more convenient!

Are the resulting program any good? I like to think so. Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma stated: "Generally, disruptive technologies underperform established products in mainstream markets. [snip] Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and frequently, more convenient to use." The point is, you don't have to outperform the best in the world. There are other opportunities in the smaller, niche markets. If you can't be a big fish in a big pond, then try to be a big fish in a small pond and make the pond bigger!

There lies the best value of a hobbyist. We don't have to have the best of everything. We just have to have a good enough tools. We don't have to be the smartest. We just have to be not stupid. We don't have to be the cheapest. We just have to provide good value. Coding? That's easy. Design? That's hard. The hard part of a journey isn't in making it. The hard part of a journey is knowing where to go!

Let's talk about professional frameworks a bit. There are many names: Xtreme, Agile, Scrum, and others. For the most part, they deal with the same issue: How to handle communication with clients. How to track progress and manage milestones. How to manage personnel involved in the project. A formal package for deliverables. There may be different philosophical and paradigm involved, but they mostly deal with the same issues.

Professionals need to deal with those issues. Not having proper procedure to deal with those issues will negatively affect client-producer relationship. So, having to follow at least one methodology is an absolutely crucial to the process. 

Hobbyist, on the other hand, don't really need to do that. They are their own clients. If something goes wrong, they can just fix it themselves. They do their own program maintenance. They don't have to worry about the ignorant boss who claims that stream-lining existing code is "a waste of time" even though it will save a lot of time in maintenance later. To that end, hobbyist have the advantage of not having to watch the clock, so to speak.

Expenses can be lower for hobbyist as well. Niche market which big business will never dream of entering is fair game for hobbyist. It's simple math: Less expense yields more profit, even if the overall revenue is less. 

So, my coding is at the amateur hobbyist level. While most people consider that as a handicap, I actually consider that as an advantage! My code is cleaner, simpler, and easier to understand. It works fast enough, and good enough to do the job well. Best of all, if there's something that is less than perfect, I'd just fix it. The source code is right there! It's easy to do because the code is simple and easy to understand. There's none of the complex framework involved as with professional quality codes. I should know, I've been both.

Following the lead of Satoru Iwata: My title may be business owner. My training is that of a computer programmer. But in my heart, I am an artist. I'm not a coder who does art. I am an artist who does code.