Tricks of the Trade

A while back I read an interview with a children’s birthday clown. At one point the interviewer asked, “What if you’re dying out there? What if the kids are hating it?” And the clown revealed a fascinating trick of the birthday clown trade: Every year, it seems, there are two or three funny words that invariably crack kids up, and when things are going sour, you can blurt one out and bring the house down. But a clown’s got to keep up to date, because the funny words mysteriously change over time. Where “booger” might have killed in 1998, 2004 demands nothing less than an “underpants.”

Curiously, I’ve noticed an almost identical aspect in the software development trade. Every year there seems to be a technical whatsit that management recognizes as the sexy-cool new thing but doesn’t really understand. This year, for instance, a programmer can always tack the phrase “and I’m thinking of incorporating some XML functionality” onto a project summary to explain why he’ll need an extra week, account for a missed deadline, or impress a superior. In this respect, the gap between software engineers and birthday clowns is almost negligible.

from Tricks of the Trade thanks Carl