Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Top Colleges for M.Tech in India



Today there are seven Indian Institutes of Technology (or IITs) offering bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, management and other disciplines. The IITs are also known for world-class research. Each of the IITs maintain their own websites and each IIT also has their own Alumni Association, see links below. The pan-IIT alumni organization provides scale and services to alumni worldwide and serves as a focal point to disseminate information about IIT Alumni.
Here is the list of Colleges in India:

1.Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee (IIT R)
Indian Institute of Technology – Roorkee is among the foremost of institutes of national importance in higher technological education and in basic and applied research. Since its establishment, the Institute has played a vital role in providing the technical manpower and know-how to the country and in pursuit of research. The Institute ranks amongst the best technological institutions in the world and has contributed to all sectors of technological development. It has also been considered a trend-setter in the area of education and research in the field of science, technology, and engineering.
The Institute has completed 150th year of its existence in October 1996. On September 21, 2001, an Ordinance issued by the Government of India declared it as the nation’s seventh Indian Institute of Technology. The Ordinance is now converted into an Act by the Parliament to make IIT, Roorkee as an “Institution of National Importance”.
The Institute offers Bachelor’s Degree courses in 10 disciplines of Engineering and Architecture and Postgraduate’ s Degree in 55 disciplines of Engineering, Applied Science, Architecture and planning. The Institute has facility for doctoral work in all Departments and Research Centres.
The Institute admits students to B.Tech. and B.Arch. courses through the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) conducted at various centres all over India.

2. Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT M)
Indian Institute of Technology Madras, is one among the foremost institutes of national importance in higher technological education, basic and applied research. In 1956, the German Government offered technical assistance for establishing an institute of higher education in engineering in India. The first Indo-German agreement in Bonn, West Germany for the establishment of the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras was signed in 1959.
The Institute was formally inaugurated in 1959 by Prof. Humayun Kabir, Union Minister for Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs.  The IIT system has seven Institutes of Technology located at Kharagpur (estb. 1951), Mumbai (estb. 1958), Chennai (estb. 1959), Kanpur (estb. 1959), Delhi (estb. 1961), Guwahati (estb. 1994) and Roorkee (estb. 1847, joined IITs in 2001).

3. Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT Kgp)
Set up in 1951, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur is the oldest of theseven IITsin India. The IITs were created with a vision for excellence in Science and Engineering. The IITs are located at KharagpurChennai (Madras)Mumbai (Bombay)DelhiKanpur,Guwahati, and Roorkee. Of them, IIT Kharagpur offers the maximum number of engineering disciplines to choose from.
Kharagpur is located about 120 kilometers from Calcutta in Eastern India. It is a quiet, isolated setting (unlike five of the other IITs which are set in cities). IIT Kharagpur also has the largest campus among all IITs (1800 acres) and offers a beautiful setting for undergraduate and postgraduate school life. This unofficial web site is maintained by The IIT Foundation.

4Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT B)
IIT Bombay, set up by an Act of Parliament, was established in 1958, at Powai, a northern suburb of Mumbai. Today the Institute is recognised as one of the centres of academic excellence in the country. Over the years, there has been dynamic progress at IIT Bombay in all academic and research activities, and a parallel improvement in facilities and infrastructure, to keep it on par with the best institutions in the world. Institutes in positions of excellence grow with time. The ideas and ideals on which such institutes are built evolve and change with national aspirations, national perspectives, and trends world – wide. IIT Bombay, too, is one such institution.

5. Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT D)
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi is one of the seven Institutes of Technology created as centres of excellence for higher training, research and development in science, engineering and technology in India, the others being at Kanpur,KharagpurMadras,BombayGuwahati and Roorkee. Established as College of Engineering in 1961, the Institute was later declared an Institution of National Importance under the “Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Act, 1963″ and was renamed “Indian Institute of Technology Delhi”. It was then accorded the status of a deemed university with powers to decide its own academic policy, to conduct its own examinations, and to award its own degrees.
HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, laid the foundation stone of the Institute on January 27, 1959. The Institute was inaugurated by Prof.Humayun Kabir, the then Union Minister for Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs on August 21, 1961. The Institute buildings were formally opened by Dr.Zakir Hussain, the then President of India, on March 2, 1968.

6. Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT K)
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur is one of the premier institutions established by the Government of India. The aim of the Institute is to provide meaningful education, to conduct original research of the highest standard and to provide leadership in technological innovation for the industrial growth of the country. The Institute began functioning in the borrowed building of Harcourt Butler Technological Institute in 1959 with 100 students and a small faculty. The Institute now has its own sprawling residential campus , about 2255 undergraduate and 1476 postgraduate students, 309 faculty and more than 900 supporting staff. The combined record of its past and present faculty and students along with the alumni spread across the world is awe-inspiring. With the path-breaking innovations in both its curriculum and research, the Institute is rapidly gaining a legendary reputation.

7. Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati (IIT G)
Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, the sixth member of the IIT fraternity, was established in 1994. The academic programme of IIT Guwahati commenced in 1995.
At present the Institute has eleven departments covering all the major engineering and science disciplines, offering B. Tech., B. Des., M. Tech., Ph.D. and M.Sc. programmes. Within a short period of time, IIT Guwahati has been able to build up the necessary infrastructure for carrying out advanced research and has been equipped with state-of-the- art scientific and engineering instruments.

8Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc B)
The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) was started in 1909 through the pioneering vision of J.N. Tata. Since then, it has grown into a premier institution of research and advanced instruction, with more than 2000 active researchers working in almost all frontier areas of science and technology. IISc is an institute of higher learning and is constantly in pursuit of excellence. It is one of the oldest and finest centres of its kind in India, and has a very high international standing in the academic world as well.

9Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani
The Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani is an all-India Institute for higher education. The primary motive of BITS is to “train young men and women able and eager to create and put into action such ideas, methods, techniques and information” . The Institute is a dream come true of its founder late Mr G.D.Birla – an eminent industrialist, a participant in Indian freedom struggle and a close associate of the Father of Indian Nation late Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi). What started in early 1900s as a small school, blossomed into a set of colleges for higher education, ranging from the Humanities to Engineering until 1964 when all these colleges amalgamated to culminate into a unique Indian University of International standing. This university was christened as the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, known to many as BITS, Pilani.
Over the years, BITS has provided the highest quality technical education to students from all over India admitted on the basis of merit. Its graduates may be found throughout the world in all areas of engineering, science and commerce. BITS symbolizes the maturing of Indian technical ability and “can-do” entrepreneurial spirit, especially as derived from the private sector. BITS is located in the Vidya Vihar campus adjacent to the town of Pilani in Rajasthan.

10. Institute of Technology ,Banaras Hindu University, (IT BHU)
Our Institute of Technology, like all other Faculties and Departments of theBanaras Hindu University, also owes its existence to the far-sighted vision and relentless efforts of its founder Mahamana Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya. During the days of freedom struggle, three engineering and technological institutions were established by Malviyaji, viz. the Banaras Engineering College (BENCO) in 1919, the College of Mining and Metallurgy (MINMET) in 1923 and the College of Technology (TECHNO). The first-ever degree courses in Mining, Metallurgy, Ceramics and Pharmaceutics in India were pioneered at BHU. After our country became independent, post graduate and doctoral research programmes were also introduced. It is an established history that BENCO, MINMET and TECHNO produced outstanding engineers who manned various industries, academic institutions, R & D Labs and others, thus providing the much needed technological leadership/skills in various sectors of indigenous development.
Since its formation, the Institute of Technology has not only developed to become a premier educational institution producing graduate engineers with sound scientific and technological background, but has grown into a Centre which provides versatile postgraduate training and conducts advanced research in Engineering and Technology. A large number of alumni of the Institute are occupying top positions in many leading industries, educational institutions and research establishments in India and abroad. Many of them have established their own industries/ companies and several are serving in diverse Governmental Departments/ Agencies.


11. College of Engg , Anna University
The Year 1994 marks the 200th anniversary of the College of Engineering, Guindy, Madras. Started as a Survey School in 1794, it was established as a College in 1859, and later as a technical University in 1978. The college has a long history and is one of the oldest Engineering Colleges in the country. This institution of standing has the unique distinction of having introduced B.E. Degree Courses in Mechanical Engineering in 1894, Electrical Engineering in 1930, Telecommunication and Highway Engineering in 1945 and Printing Technology in 1983. It was the first institution in South India to establish a Computer Centre as early as 1963.
The College has diversified its academic, research and consultancy activities to meet the socioeconomic and technological needs of the time. It has established its own Industry-Institute link with prestigious universities and organisations, such as, USAID, UNCHS, Ford Foundation, European Economic Community and the Governments of Germany and UK.The growth of this institution of learning is reflected in the expansion of its library and facilities. With a collection of 90,000 volumes and subscription to 500 journals the library is a veritable storehouse of knowledge for the 3,200 students on the rolls of the College.

12. Birla Institute of Technology, BIT Mishra
BIT, Mesra is a “Deemed University” under Sec. 3 of the U.G.C. act 1986. It functions under the overall supervision, direction and control of a high power Board of Governors, comprising representatives of the Ministry of Education, Government of India, the U.G.C., the State Government, The Chancellor, the AICTE, The Hindustan Charity Trust and the Institute Faculty. Shri G.P. Birla is the Chairman of the Board of Governors. The Governor of the state of Jharkhand is the Chancellor of the Institute. The Technical Council decides the academic policy of the Institute.

13. National  Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli
The National Institute of Technology (formerly known as Regional Engineering College) Tiruchirappalli, situated in the heart of Tamil Nadu on the banks of river Cauvery, was started as a joint and co-operative venture of the Government of India and the Government of Tamil Nadu in 1964 with a view to catering to the needs of man-power in technology for the country. The college has been conferred with autonomy in financial and administrative matters to achieve rapid development. Because of this rich experience, this institution was granted Deemed University Status with the approval of the UGC/AICTE and Govt. of India in the year 2003 and renamed as National Institute of Technology. NIT-T was registered under Societies Registration Act XXVII of 1975.

14. National Institute of  Technology Karnataka (NITK), Surathkal
Since its inception in 1960, the National Institute of  Technology Karnataka (NITK), Surathkal has established itself as a premier Institution engaged in imparting quality technological education and providing support to research and development activities. NITK is committed to enhance capabilities and potential of our human resources with the objective of transforming them into leaders in their chosen areas of interest. Our vision is to strive for excellence, be globally competitive in technical education and focus on knowledge assimilation, generation and dissemination. NITK has carved a niche for itself among the best technical institutes in India and is a dream institute for many budding engineers. Our distinguished alumni occupy coveted positions both in India and abroad and are a source of pride and inspiration to us.
I am confident that with the concerted efforts of the management, faculty, staff and students, NITK will scale new heights of excellence in the years to come.

15. Thapar Inst of Engineering & Technology Patiala
The Thapar University is today recognized among the leading privately managed grant-in-aid engineering institutions of the country and the best of its kind in the north-western region of India. NAAC, an Autonomous Institution of UGC, has accredited Thapar University at the B++ level among Deemed Universities with Institutional score of 82%.
The TTC with its three institutions viz, TU, TP and TCIRD, is today a unique Campus in our country with extraordinary potential for development of indigenous technology and its engineering industries.
Thapar University has impressively grown in size and activities during the last five decades of its existence. Nearly 10,500 engineers have left its portals so far, distinguishing themselves as proud Thaparians in diverse fields in our country and aboard. As a fitting recognition of its pioneering role in promoting the growth and development both at National and International levels, Thapar University was granted full autonomy and the status of a Deemed University  in 1985 UGC.

16. Motilal Nehru National Inst. of Technology, Allahabad
Motilal Nehru National Institute Of Technology, Allahabad was formerly Motilal Nehru Regional Engineering College, Allahabad . It is an institute with total commitment to quality and excellence in academic pursuits, is among one of the leading institutes in INDIA and was established in year 1961 as a joint enterprise of Govt. of India and Govt. of U.P. in accordance with the scheme of establishment of REC. However with effect from June 26th of 2002 the college became deemed university and is now known as Motilal Nehru National Institute of technology.
The foundation stone of the college was laid by the first Prime Minister of India, Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru on the 3rd of may, 1961 on a site spreading over 222 acres on the banks of the river Ganga. The main building of college was inaugurated by another illustrious son of India, Prime Minister Sri Lal Bahadur Shastri on 18th of April, 1965.
MNNIT is fully residential institution with seven hostels for boys and two for girls. One

Hitting the High Notes..====>>By Joel Spolsky

Journy of building a software company:

In March, 2000, I launched this site with the shaky claim that most people are wrong in thinking you need an idea to make a successful software company:

The common belief is that when you're building a software company, the goal is to find a neat idea that solves some problem which hasn't been solved before, implement it, and make a fortune. We'll call this the build-a-better-mousetrap belief. But the real goal for software companies should be converting capital into software that works.

For the last five years I've been testing that theory in the real world. The formula for the company I started with Michael Pryor in September, 2000 can be summarized in four steps:

Best Working Conditions       →        Best Programmers   →        Best Software →        Profit!


It's a pretty convenient formula, especially since our real goal in starting Fog Creek was to create a software company where we would want to work. I made the claim, in those days, that good working conditions (or, awkwardly, "building the company where the best software developers in the world would want to work") would lead to profits as naturally as chocolate leads to chubbiness or cartoon sex in video games leads to gangland-style shooting sprees.

For today, though, I want to answer just one question, because if this part isn't true, the whole theory falls apart. That question is, does it even make sense to talk about having the "best programmers?" Is there so much variation between programmers that this even matters?

Maybe it's obvious to us, but to many, the assertion still needs to be proven.

Several years ago a larger company was considering buying out Fog Creek, and I knew it would never work as soon as I heard the CEO of that company say that he didn't really agree with my theory of hiring the best programmers. He used a biblical metaphor: you only need one King David, and an army of soldiers who merely had to be able to carry out orders. His company's stock price promptly dropped from 20 to 5, so it's a good thing we didn't take the offer, but it's hard to pin that on the King David fetish.

And in fact the conventional wisdom in the world of copycat business journalists and large companies who rely on overpaid management consultants to think for them, chew their food, etc., seems to be that the most important thing is reducing the cost of programmers.

In some other industries, cheap is more important than good. Wal*Mart grew to be the biggest corporation on Earth by selling cheap products, not good products. If Wal*Mart tried to sell high quality goods, their costs would go up and their whole cheap advantage would be lost. For example if they tried to sell a tube sock that can withstand the unusual rigors of, say, being washed in a washing machine, they'd have to use all kinds of expensive components, like, say, cotton, and the cost for every single sock would go up.

So, why isn't there room in the software industry for a low cost provider, someone who uses the cheapest programmers available? (Remind me to ask Quark how that whole fire-everybody-and-hire-low-cost-replacements plan is working.)

Here's why: duplication of software is free. That means that the cost of programmers is spread out over all the copies of the software you sell. With software, you can improve quality without adding to the incremental cost of each unit sold.

Essentially, design adds value faster than it adds cost.

Or, roughly speaking, if you try to skimp on programmers, you'll make crappy software, and you won't even save that much money.

The same thing applies to the entertainment industry. It's worth hiring Brad Pitt for your latest blockbuster movie, even though he demands a high salary, because that salary can be divided by all the millions of people who see the movie solely because Brad is so damn hot.

Or, to put it another way, it's worth hiring Angelina Jolie for your latest blockbuster movie, even though she demands a high salary, because that salary can be divided by all the millions of people who see the movie solely because Angelina is so damn hot.

But I still haven't proven anything. What does it mean to be "the best programmer" and are there really such major variations between the quality of software produced by different programmers?

Let's start with plain old productivity. It's rather hard to measure programmer productivity; almost any metric you can come up with (lines of debugged code, function points, number of command-line arguments) is trivial to game, and it's very hard to get concrete data on large projects because it's very rare for two programmers to be told to do the same thing.

The data I rely upon comes from Professor Stanley Eisenstat at Yale. Each year he teaches a programming-intensive course, CS 323, where a large proportion of the work consists of about five programming assignments, each of which takes about two weeks. The assignments are very serious for a college class: implement a Unix command-line shell, implement a ZLW file compressor, etc.


There was so much griping among the students about how much work was required for this class that Professor Eisenstat started asking the students to report back on how much time they spent on each assignment. He has collected this data carefully for several years.

I spent some time crunching the data; it's the only data sets I know of where we have dozens of students working on identical assignments using the same technology at the same time. It's pretty darn controlled, as experiments go.

The first thing I did with this data was to calculate the average, minimum, maximum, and standard deviation of hours spent on each of twelve assignments. The results:Project         Avg Hrs          Min Hrs           Max Hrs            StDev Hrs
CMDLINE99 14.84   4.67     29.25   5.82
COMPRESS00           33.83   11.58   77.00   14.51
COMPRESS01           25.78   10.00   48.00   9.96
COMPRESS99           27.47   6.67     69.50   13.62
LEXHIST01   17.39   5.50     39.25   7.39
MAKE01        22.03   8.25     51.50   8.91
MAKE99        22.12   6.77     52.75   10.72
SHELL00       22.98   10.00   38.68   7.17
SHELL01       17.95   6.00     45.00   7.66
SHELL99       20.38   4.50     41.77   7.03
TAR00            12.39   4.00     69.00   10.57
TEX00            21.22   6.00     75.00   12.11
ALL PROJECTS        21.44   4.00     77.00   11.16


The most obvious thing you notice here is the huge variations. The fastest students were finishing three or four times faster than the average students and as much as ten times faster than the slowest students. The standard deviation is outrageous. So then I thought, hmm, maybe some of these students are doing a terrible job. I didn't want to include students who spent 4 hours on the assignment without producing a working program. So I narrowed the data down and only included the data from students who were in the top quartile of grades... the top 25% in terms of the quality of the code. I should mention that grades in Professor Eisenstat's class are completely objective: they're calculated formulaically based on how many automated tests the code passes and nothing else. No points are deducted for bad style or lateness.

Anyway, here are the results for the top quartile:
Project Avg Hrs          Min Hrs           Max Hrs          StdDev Hrs
CMDLINE99 13.89   8.68     29.25   6.55
COMPRESS00           37.40   23.25   77.00   16.14
COMPRESS01           23.76   15.00   48.00   11.14
COMPRESS99           20.95   6.67     39.17   9.70
LEXHIST01   14.32   7.75     22.00   4.39
MAKE01        22.02   14.50   36.00   6.87
MAKE99        22.54   8.00     50.75   14.80
SHELL00       23.13   18.00   30.50   4.27
SHELL01       16.20   6.00     34.00   8.67
SHELL99       20.98   13.15   32.00   5.77
TAR00            11.96   6.35     18.00   4.09
TEX00            16.58   6.92     30.50   7.32
ALL PROJECTS        20.49   6.00     77.00   10.93



Not much difference! The standard deviation is almost exactly the same for the top quartile. In fact when you look closely at the data it's pretty clear there's no discernable correlation between the time and score. Here's a typical scatter plot of one of the assignments... I chose the assignment COMPRESS01, an implementation of Ziv-Lempel-Welch compression assigned to students in 2001, because the standard deviation there is close to the overall standard deviation.



There's just nothing to see here, and that's the point. The quality of the work and the amount of time spent are simply uncorrelated.

I asked Professor Eisenstat about this, and he pointed out one more thing: because assignments are due at a fixed time (usually midnight) and the penalties for being late are significant, a lot of students stop before the project is done. In other words, the maximum time spent on these assignments is as low as it is partially because there just aren't enough hours between the time the assignment is handed out and the time it is due. If students had unlimited time to work on the projects (which  would correspond a little better to the working world), the spread could only be higher.

This data is not completely scientific. There's probably some cheating. Some students may overreport the time spent on assignments in hopes of gaining some sympathy and getting easier assignments the next time. (Good luck! The assignments in CS 323 are the same today as they were when I took the class in the 1980s.) Other students may underreport because they lost track of time. Still, I don't think it's a stretch to believe this data shows 5:1 or 10:1 productivity differences between programmers.

But wait, there's more!

If the only difference between programmers were productivity, you might think that you could substitute five mediocre programmers for one really good programmer. That obviously doesn't work. Brooks' Law, "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later," is why. A single good programmer working on a single task has no coordination or communication overhead. Five programmers working on the same task must coordinate and communicate. That takes a lot of time. There are added benefits to using the smallest team possible; the man-month really is mythical.

But wait, there's even more!

The real trouble with using a lot of mediocre programmers instead of a couple of good ones is that no matter how long they work, they never produce something as good as what the great programmers can produce.

Five Antonio Salieris won't produce Mozart's Requiem. Ever. Not if they work for 100 years.

Five Jim Davis's -- creator of that unfunny cartoon cat, where 20% of the jokes are about how Monday sucks and the rest are about how much the cat likes lasagna (and those are the punchlines!) ... five Jim Davis's could spend the rest of their lives writing comedy and never, ever produce the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld.

The Creative Zen team could spend years refining their ugly iPod knockoffs and never produce as beautiful, satisfying, and elegant a player as the Apple iPod. And they're not going to make a dent in Apple's market share because the magical design talent is just not there. They don't have it.

The mediocre talent just never hits the high notes that the top talent hits all the time. The number of divas who can hit the f6 in Mozart's Queen of the Night is vanishingly small, and you just can't perform The Queen of the Night without that famous f6.

Is software really about artistic high notes? "Maybe some stuff is," you say, "but I work on accounts receivable user interfaces for the medical waste industry." Fair enough. This is a conversation about software companies, shrinkwrap software, where the company's success or failure is directly a result of the quality of their code.

And we've seen plenty of examples of great software, the really high notes, in the past few years: stuff that mediocre software developers just could not have developed.

Back in 2003, Nullsoft shipped a new version of Winamp, with the following notice on their website:
Snazzy new look!
Groovy new features!
Most things actually work!

It's the last part... the "Most things actually work!" that makes everyone laugh. And then they're happy, and so they get excited about Winamp, and they use it, and tell their friends, and they think Winamp is awesome, all because they actually wrote on their website, "Most things actually work!" How cool is that?

If you threw a bunch of extra programmers onto the Windows Media Player team, would they ever hit that high note? Never in a thousand years. Because the more people you added to that team, the more likely they would be to have one real grump who thought it was unprofessional and immature to write "Most things actually work" on your website.

Not to mention the comment, "Winamp 3: Almost as new as Winamp 2!"

That kind of stuff is what made us love Winamp.

By the time AOL Time Warner Corporate Weenieheads got their hands on that thing the funny stuff from the website was gone. You can just see them, fuming and festering and snivelling like Salieri in the movie Amadeus, trying to beat down all signs of creativity which might scare one old lady in Minnesota, at the cost of wiping out anything that might have made people like the product.

Or look at the iPod. You can't change the battery. So when the battery dies, too bad. Get a new iPod. Actually, Apple will replace it if you send it back to the factory, but that costs $65.95. Wowza.

Why can't you change the battery?

My theory is that it's because Apple didn't want to mar the otherwise perfectly smooth, seamless surface of their beautiful, sexy iPod with one of those ghastly battery covers you see on other cheapo consumer crap, with the little latches that are always breaking and the seams that fill up with pocket lint and all that general yuckiness. The iPod is the most seamless piece of consumer electronics I have ever seen. It's beautiful. It feels beautiful, like a smooth river stone. One battery latch can blow the whole river stone effect.

Apple made a decision based on style, in fact, iPod is full of decisions that are based on style. And style is not something that 100 programmers at Microsoft or 200 industrial designers at the inaptly-named Creative are going to be able to achieve, because they don't have Jonathan Ive, and there aren't a heck of a lot of Jonathan Ives floating around.

I'm sorry, I can't stop talking about the iPod. That beautiful thumbwheel with its little clicky sounds ...  Apple spent extra money putting a speaker in the iPod itself so that the thumbwheel clicky sounds would come from the thumbwheel. They could have saved pennies ... pennies! by playing the clicky sounds through the headphones. But the thumbwheel makes you feel like you're in control. People like to feel in control. It makes people happy to feel in control. The fact that the thumbwheel responds smoothly, fluently, and audibly to your commands makes you happy. Not like the other 6,000 pocket-sized consumer electronics bit of junk which take so long booting up that when you hit the on/off switch you have to wait a minute to find out if anything happened. Are you in control? Who knows? When was the last time you had a cell phone that went on the instant you pressed the on button?

Style.

Happiness.

Emotional appeal.

These are what make the huge hits, in software products, in movies, and in consumer electronics. And if you don't get this stuff right you may solve the problem but your product doesn't become the #1 hit that makes everybody in the company rich so you can all drive stylish, happy, appealing, cars like the Ferrari Spider F-1 and still have enough money left over to build an ashram in your back yard.

It's not just a matter of "10 times more productive." It's that the "average productive" developer never hits the high notes that make great software.

Sadly, this doesn't really apply in non-product software development. Internal, in-house software is rarely important enough to justify hiring rock stars. Nobody hires Dolly Parton to sing at weddings. That's why the most satisfying careers, if you're a software developer, are at actual software companies, not doing IT for some bank.

The software marketplace, these days, is something of a winner-take-all system. Nobody else is making money on MP3 players other than Apple. Nobody else makes money on spreadsheets and word processors other than Microsoft, and, yes, I know, they did anti-competitive things to get into that position, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a winner-take-all system.

You can't afford to be number two, or to have a "good enough" product. It has to be remarkably good, by which I mean, so good that people remark about it. The lagniappe that you get from the really, really, really talented software developers is your only hope for remarkableness. It's all in the plan:

Best Working Conditions        →        Best Programmers   →        Best Software →        Profit!


Oh, and by the way: My company, Fog Creek Software, has paid internships in software development for qualified college students. They're in New York City. Free housing, lunch, and more. And you get to work on real, shipping software with the smartest developers in the business.

About the Author: I’m your host, Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. Since 2000, I've been writing about software development, management, business, and the Internet on this site. For my day job, I run Fog Creek Software, makers of FogBugz—the smart bug tracking software with the stupid name, and Fog Creek Copilot—the easiest way to provide remote tech support over the Internet, with nothing to install or configure.

                                                                              
 Hitting the High Notes
By Joel Spolsky
Monday, July 25, 2005