Unless your technology will be required to interact with the technology other people are using, which is most of the time. “What will work best” often depends heavily on “what other people are doing”.
No, at that point you still only consider what will work the best. It’s a nitpick, but “what will work the best when others do this” is a different question to “what are the other people doing”.
Absolutely. What I mean is that they are incompatible. In the common case, it’s impossible to simultaneously “consider what will work best” and “ignore what other people are doing”. Figuring out what will work best requires paying attention to what other people are doing.
One of the things that other people do is to build standard parts.
If one has an unlimited budget, one can ignore them, and build
everything in a project from optimized custom parts. This is rare.
When you choose technology, you have to ignore what other people are doing, and consider only what will work the best. -Paul Graham
Unless your technology will be required to interact with the technology other people are using, which is most of the time. “What will work best” often depends heavily on “what other people are doing”.
No, at that point you still only consider what will work the best. It’s a nitpick, but “what will work the best when others do this” is a different question to “what are the other people doing”.
Absolutely. What I mean is that they are incompatible. In the common case, it’s impossible to simultaneously “consider what will work best” and “ignore what other people are doing”. Figuring out what will work best requires paying attention to what other people are doing.
I find myself doing the latter via reference to the former.
One of the things that other people do is to build standard parts. If one has an unlimited budget, one can ignore them, and build everything in a project from optimized custom parts. This is rare.