Cowboys, Frontiersmen, Settlers, Townspeople, Cityfolk

Simon Wardley made an important comment on LinkedIn which is worth repeating here because I really feel the settler-colonial language here is unhelpful and obnoxious (what are we implying with 'legends are formed from chaos', destroying everything that exists before and erasing its history is good?):

> PST (pioneer-settler-town planner) is just the original naming of EVT (explorer - village - town planner). I changed the naming because after 18 years of doing this, I finally accepted the colonialist overtones of the original naming. That was 3 years ago.

As I organize the history of programming, I think the OP's analogy is right. I remember that in the early days, code that just worked as long as it was implemented was called 'cowboy coding.' These days in the US, it's not considered a good coding practice, but there were many programmers who missed it.

During that time, many star programmers emerged. The legends we know today. When cowboy coding started causing problems with collaboration, rules had to be created, and people wrote those rules. Whether it was creating something from 0 to 1 or various other areas, stars seemed to emerge everywhere.

But as time passed and businesses became more sophisticated, the early implementations piled up layer after layer, and human cognitive limits started to show. It seems like it's becoming increasingly difficult for extremely talented star programmers to emerge in specific fields.

In reality, everything—networking, databases, browsers—has become so much harder than in the old days. When I first learned computers, it was opening Notepad, creating an HTML file, and loading it. These days, people start with Python.

So as an industry becomes more advanced, it seems harder for a star programmer who can control everything alone to emerge.

Star programmers are appearing in the AI field right now because it's a new, unexplored territory. They implemented a lot early on and started creating things from 0 to 1, which excites people. But no matter how much I think about it, I don't have the ability to create from 0 to 1. I can't even take something from 1 to 100. I can only combine things at the 20–30 level to make a single product. That's why I think it's hard for me to become a star programmer.

I also want to become a cowboy somewhere, so I've been wandering through an empty pasture, but I don't know where that place is

Wardley's original post on this [0] is worth a read. OP adds cowboys and city folk, and makes it a bit more personal.

5 interesting things that are worth making explicit:

1. These teams/roles are as much about appetite and attitude, as they are about someone's skills and capabilities. Some people just aren't comfortable or happy when operating in these environments.

2. Innovation isn't just at the early "0 to 1" stages. Townspeople need to innovate to scale from a million users to a billion.

3. Successful orgs have teams at all stages, working together. Each team evolves what the previous stage built. And cowboys / pioneers are only successful if they can build on industrialised components.

5. As a product evolves, it moves through the stages. Teams either need to let go, or change their way of working.

[0] https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/on-pioneers-settlers-to...