Joel Spolsky has another great rant, this time about what he calls Architecture Astronauts.

The hallmark of an “architecture astronaut” is that they don’t solve an actual problem… they solve something that appears to be the template of a lot of problems. Or at least, they try. […]

[…] one sure tip-off to the fact that you’re being assaulted by an Architecture Astronaut: the incredible amount of bombast; the heroic, utopian grandiloquence; the boastfulness; the complete lack of reality. And people buy it! The business press goes wild!

The web 2.0 and Open Source business world still has some of that, and not only with synchronisation (which served as Joel’s key example). And apart from producing stuff people don’t really want/need, many companies operating in this sphere simply do not seem to grasp, is that announcing something is not at all interesting. A press release does not make me want to take a look at your product!

Their delusion of the importance of their foo is induced by the fact that they’ve been working on it for way too long (time to market is key, really), so of course it’s exciting to them! But that’s not the real world. I believe this actually relates to both the product itself, as well as the announcements for it.

Yes, I know that press releases are aimed at the media journos (that’s journalist in good Autralian) and not at the general public, however the general public does get to see it on front pages, rss feeds, and so no. And do the journos want to see this stuff? Probably not.

I am also fully aware that there are different sets of users, and someone hacking in their attic is not the same as a big corporation (although these days the big corp could be based in the attic! ;-). But I do think that fundamentally, times have changed, and neither of the aforementioned target audiences actually cares squat about most announcements, new fancy products, and so on.

What is cool is, as usual, someone else raving about something.