Linux, OS X, and cowboy coding

Frank Steele has an interesting piece about running a business on OS X and Linux, but it's also about simplicity versus complexity and "real" software development versus scripting (something I touched on last year that got a lot of discussion going on Slashdot).

I worked with Frank back in my CNN.com and CNNSI.com days so his lessons are familiar and a lot of what I write about here at InfoWorld was learned in those days. The development group I hired and managed to build, launch, and maintain CNNSI.com could have won a few cowboy coding rodeos had they existed -- but then again, the web was new and we were blazing new trails by solving problems that had never been solved before, so a little cowboy bravado was probably in order.