I want less stuff in my Backpack

Posted by Jaan on February 27th, 2008 | Add your comment

Over the weekend I read Andrew Park’s Wired story “The Brash Programmers at 37signals Will Tell You: Keep It Simple, Stupid“.

Since then one thing has been nagging me. Park writes “The Basecamp message boards are filled with complaints from unhappy users, fed up with the software’s paucity of features [...] who have switched to competing products.” While I haven’t seen those particular complaints, I have heard similar things from a few people just recently.

I do how ever completely disagree. I think some of the 37Signal’s products are getting too many features!

I am all about the lean and mean approach. Lately I feel that Backpack in particular has been getting a bit to feature heavy. I know that I don’t have to use these new fangled improvements, but still… I want my 37Signals diet super lean.

Why is that? Why don’t I want more stuff in my apps?

I think I have an answer. I like change if it comes with potential for improvement.

I have had to make changes to the way I work because of the tools I use, including Basecamp. But you know what, it’s only benefited my clients and myself. I don’t mind tweaking and improving how I manage projects because Basecamp doesn’t support something-or-other. Similarly, not being able to format text in Writeroom has allowed me to focus more on what I actually write.

The reason I don’t mind is that 37Signals and Jesse Grosjean (Mr. Writeroom) have had time to think about how to do these two things really well. That is why beyond the apps themselves there is an opportunity to do better, and that is never ever a bad thing.

Come to think of it, the addition of these new features are reasons for me to do some more rethinking about how I do stuff in order to do better.