Sure, developer best practices are nice.
But why doesn’t anybody ever talk about worst practices?
Those can be inspiring in their own way, like the story of this guy Michael:
Michael didn’t have a happy childhood. He was in and out of foster care. He got expelled from multiple schools.
As a teen, he wanted to be an actor. But he had partial paralysis in his face, which meant he slurred his speech.
Desperate to break into the biz, he took a role in an adult film. 😬
(Less talking, perhaps?)
It was obviously not the answer. Michael continued to struggle through his 20s.
Somehow, in 1975, he found himself in Richfield, Ohio. There, he watched Muhammad Ali, the greatest boxer of all time, knock out huge underdog Chuck Wepner.
It wasn’t pretty:
But Michael saw himself in Wepner. An underdog. Beat up. Struggling.
And two things inspired Michael that night:
- In the 9th round, Wepner knocked down the heavyweight champion
- Ali won with only 19 seconds to spare in the final round
Very few boxers had gone the distance against Ali. Wepner almost did it. And even fewer had knocked down the champ—Wepner was the fourth and last to do it.
Inspired, Michael feverishly wrote a movie script based on what he saw. For the credit, he decided to use his middle name, Sylvester.
Then, against greater odds than Wepner experienced, he got the movie made, with himself as the star.
Two years and four days after that trip to Ohio, Michael Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky won Best Picture.
The underdog story captured audiences.
The reverse story, of the 10:1 favorite who goes on to win as expected? That would not have been made.
And yet, almost every company tells developers the Muhammad Ali version: everything is great, the product is perfect, and it’s exactly what developers should use.
You can’t build trust this way. No product is as rosy as its marketing.
Developers won’t believe you anyway, so you should be realistic: show the edge cases, be clear about where your product does not shine…
Tell the Chuck Wepner version. The Rocky version.
And if you need someone to stand outside the ring and cheer you on—and help craft a narrative that will resonate with developers—reach out to my team.