Steve Jobs, plywood and sleeping well

I was saddened when I heard the news of Steve Jobs’ death. He, with the design team as Apple, has not only developed innovative and beautiful products, but has created and shaped completely new markets and changed the way we think, work and play with technology. What Apple has achieved in the last decade is staggering, and is largely the result of Jobs’ vision, determination, and stubbornness, but I think it’s the drive for detail and pride in craftsmanship that really gives these products the edge.

One of my favourite Jobs quotes – “When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

For software developers, the code is the back of the chest. The best developers don’t use plywood – they are obsessive over elegance and detail – they’re concise, they format consistently, they comment, they refactor, they don’t duplicate. They should sleep well at night.