What makes some pieces of technology take off? Why is java popular and not small talk or Haskell?

Gabe is a popular blogger, a former Haskell cheerleader, and creator of the Dhall configuration language. Today we talk about marketing and tech evangelism.

“One common mistake I see a lot of new open source developers make is they tried to build what I call the hype train. Where they have started a new project that has a lot of potential and they advertise on hacker news hoping that, okay, we’re gonna generate a lot of hype, maybe get a lot of influx of new contributors, new contributes, new features, generate more hype and so forth.”

“They hope that there’ll be that virtuous cycle that will get them to the mainstream in practice, that never happens. Usually, the thing about contributors is that their needs are always going to be fragmented, right? If you have eight new contributors, they’re going to be taking you in eight different directions. You should focus on one direction and sometimes that means not only doing a lot of work yourself, but it’s explicitly saying no to something and saying this is not where I want to take the product right now.”

Links:

Crossing the Chasm

Dhall

Adam’s SE Radio Interview with Gabe

Haskell For All – Gabe’s Blog