Pensieri di un lunatico minore

Why I care about RedMonk

I am the sworn enemy of most analysts, who do little more than tell you one of two things: 1) what happened 5 years ago, but you weren’t paying attention, or 2) exactly what won’t happen in the future. If you were to do the exact opposite of their recommendations, you’d be better off. Not so with RedMonk. I’ve never been one of their clients, but the words they seem to share seem well thought out and, more importantly, unsure. Take James Governor’s latest comments:

Of course you have to be careful when attempting to parse a massed chorus of canaries in a coal mine. Developers are not the same as normal people. Tom at dopplr pointed out the other day that RedMonk does self-select an audience. Well so be it. We like hanging out with that self-selected audience. We live in the same future as them. Not necessarily the future, but a future. Your mileage may of course vary. Will we make mistakes? Sure. But we can also help you avoid some. Software development trend watching as risk management: our track record is pretty solid in that regard. By being “embedded” in talented software development teams hopefully it will get even better.

Imperfection? Yes. Realism? Yes.