One-man programming shops

Here's an interesting blog post bemoaning the fact that one guy can't really expect to have a service that is as refined as something a whole team has hammered out.  His example is notifications - people expect a notification workflow that is as perfectly refined as Facebook, and it's too jarring if something doesn't work quite perfectly, whether that's because it took too long to notify, or there was a notification flood when twenty people opened your link, or .. whatever.

I'm not sure I buy this.  I mean, sure, it's true that a good team can work out something to perfection.  But a good team can also come out with iOS 6 maps - having more people on something is no guarantee of success.

And Facebook has a billion users - you can survive fine on five hundred.  They're offering what they offer - but you're offering something new, or something niche, and your users know you're not Facebook.  They really won't mind the occasional rough edge.  Those that do are callow wastes of your time - who leaves a good service because the logo was three pixels too wide?  Nobody.  Seriously.

But, all that said, this is why Best Practices and architectural patterns exist.  For something as universal as notifications, there should be some reference standard workflow, and ways to talk about it.  Every now and again you see a really nice survey article about best practices in, say, password reminders or order workflow - this is the kind of thing I'd like to see more of.