Search
Close this search box.

The Early Adopters

June 17, 2004

Several years ago, Salon.com had a contest for the motto for Silicon Valley. Maurice Herlihy1 won with the slogan “Quality is Job 1.1.” Maurice’s slogan is certainly clever (and disconcertingly accurate at times), but one of the honorable mentions actually struck me as being truer to Silicon Valley: Eli Neiburger’s “God bless the early adopters.” If you have ever developed a revolutionary technology — one that requires people to change the way they think at some level — you know how unbelievably true this is. For it is the Early Adopter who puts up with tremendous pain to get their hands on a technology, goes through the tedium of constantly communicating the technology’s shortcomings to its inventors, endures the slow march towards something usable, and through it all somehow finds the energy to talk enthusiastically about the nascent technology at every opportunity. The Early Adopters are something of a riddle to me, but they’re so incredibly important to birthing new technology, that I almost view it as uncouth to dissect what makes them tick. So “God bless the early adopter,” indeed. There is no better slogan for Silicon Valley; you were robbed, Eli.

I bring all of this up because one of the great DTrace Early Adopters, Jon Haslam, has joined the Sun blogmania. Jon is a canonical Early Adopter in that he remained a terrific advocate for the technology, even when it was in a painfully unfinished state. We sometimes don’t understand what makes Jon tick, but DTrace certainly wouldn’t be what it is without him; God bless him…


1Maurice was actually a professor of mine at school; his course on lock- and wait-free synchronization was one of the highlights of my education. The course was a seminar, and one week the low quality of that week’s paper led me to decry the generally woeful state of academic computer science: “Maurice,” I whined, “95% of it is crap!” “Bryan,” he replied, “95% of everything is crap.” I conceded the point…

3 Responses

  1. > “Bryan,” he replied, “95% of everything is crap.”
    This, of course, is a re-statement of Sturgeon’s Law. From the Jargon File:
    “Theodore Sturgeon […] once said, “Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That’s because 90% of everything is crud.””

  2. > “Bryan,” he replied, “95% of everything is crap.”
    This, of course, is a re-statement of Sturgeon’s Law. From the Jargon File:
    “Theodore Sturgeon […] once said, “Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That’s because 90% of everything is crud.””

Leave a Reply

Recent Posts

September 2, 2024
November 18, 2023
November 27, 2022
October 11, 2020
July 31, 2019
December 16, 2018
September 18, 2018
December 21, 2016
September 30, 2016
September 26, 2016
September 13, 2016
July 29, 2016
December 17, 2015
September 16, 2015
January 6, 2015
November 10, 2013
September 3, 2013
June 7, 2012
September 15, 2011
August 15, 2011
March 9, 2011
September 24, 2010
August 11, 2010
July 30, 2010
July 25, 2010
March 10, 2010
November 26, 2009
February 19, 2009
February 2, 2009
November 10, 2008
November 3, 2008
September 3, 2008
July 18, 2008
June 30, 2008
May 31, 2008
March 16, 2008
December 18, 2007
December 5, 2007
November 11, 2007
November 8, 2007
September 6, 2007
August 21, 2007
August 2, 2007
July 11, 2007
May 20, 2007
March 19, 2007
October 12, 2006
August 17, 2006
August 7, 2006
May 1, 2006
December 13, 2005
November 16, 2005
September 13, 2005
September 9, 2005
August 21, 2005

Archives

Archives