laziness The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer. impatience The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least that pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer. hubris Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer. patience The patience to meet the psychological needs of the customer is the first 90% of tech support. You must be able to explain where the "any" key is with a straight face, and present solutions that the customer will be able to accept without being made to feel stoopid. Hence, the first great virtue of a user support analyst. service In external tech support, The Phones Come First. In internal tech support, There Are No Support Boundaries. Both of these situations emphasize service: maximize your availability. Note that this also means that you need to make an effort to reduce stress, which is one of the banes of tech support. Hey, at least it's less stressful than air traffic control. Hence, the second great virtue of a user support analyst. accuracy Just as the ability to meet the customer's psychological needs is the first 90% of tech support, technical accuracy is the other 90% of tech support. Most user support analysts place great emphasis on accuracy, but it is in third place here on purpose, because it does no one any good to bludgeon the customer with your divine acumen. Cure yourself of Male Answer Syndrome: if you don't know the answer, make sure you know where to find the answer, and don't just make something up that sounds plausible. Hence, the third great virtue of a user support analyst. quality Defy the limitations of HTML and endemic browser compatibility quirks to bring uncompromising quality layout design to your web sites. The pixel shim is your friend. So are the 216 browser-safe colors: they help you avoid coyote ugly cross-platform dithering and color shifts. Hence, the first great virtue of a web site designer. brevity Hook those websurfers in the first 300 vertical pixels, because that's your only chance to hold their interest before they move on to the next wave. Good keywords help people find your site quickly and efficiently. Hence, the second great virtue of a web site designer. bandwidth Not everyone surfs the Internet with a T3 line at their fingertips; a lot of people out there still have toaster-net systems with slow modems and ISPs on a shoestring equipment budget. Use color reduction to crunch your images down to a reasonable size. Try to maintain the quality of your web pages under Lynx and in graphical browsers with the images turned off; in other words, tag and bag yer images. This conserves bandwidth and enhances handicap accessibility. Hence, the third great virtue of a web site designer.

Comments to maintainer: shiva@io.com. This publication ©1996 by Escalation Systems Consulting, a wannabe consultancy firm principally run by Earl Cooley III. All rights reserved. <URL:http://www.io.com/~shiva/ninevirtues.html> last updated on Thursday, October 24, 1996 8:02:51 PM. This site uses some Third-Generation Site Design principles, some HTML 3.2 features and is maintained using HomeSite 2.0. Designed by a member of