Just Build Websites

Here’s something you might not know about me: I like to play golf. As such, I follow a couple of golf-related brands on social media as a guilty pleasure.

The other day an image surfaced on Taylormade’s account which showcases Tommy Fleetwood playing some of their newest irons.

Photograph of Tommy Fleetwood in a follow-through swing with text superimposed on the image detailing statistics about the iron he’s using. A P7CB 3 iron with a 20 degree loft and 58 degree lie. A PX 6.5 shaft with a 39 in. cut length and a blue iomic grip.

When I mindlessly scroll these accounts (i.e. advertisements) my mind starts to be convinced that what they have to offer will make me a better golfer.

But I’ve lived long enough now to remember that the reason Tommy Fleetwood is so friggin’ good at golf isn’t because of the hardware he’s using.

Here’s my doctored image of what makes Tommy great:

Photograph of Tommy Fleetwood in a follow-through swing with text superimposed on the image detailing his experience. 30 years of practice and over 1,000,000 balls hit.

You see golfers love their data: ball spin rate, club head speed, flight trajectory, the whole works.

And when it comes to equipment, like irons, there’s a rabbit hole you can go down in customization: club loft, shaft length, and don’t even get me started on materials.

I don’t doubt there’s a science to golf hardware and it bleeds into advertisements like the one above, communicating between the lines: “This product will definitely make you better. I mean just look at all the data and science that went into making it!”

But the fact is: I’m just not good enough to take advantage of most of this stuff, despite what the ads may tell me.

The best thing I can do to make my game better is ignore analyzing all the data and ignore the feeling that if I just bought one more thing…

The Parallel to Tech

We love looking at what other people use: what tools they use, what hardware they have, what desk they sit at, what programming language they like, what framework they opt for, etc.

At some level, I think we believe that if we use the same thing somebody else uses we’ll get a similar result — and plenty of people will pitch you that, e.g. “I made X with Y, so you too can make X with Y! Buy it here for $---”

I’m reminded of a video where somebody asked Tiger Woods what his number one tip is for amateur golfers who want to improve their game.

He (semi-) jokingly responds: don’t watch YouTube. Then, more seriously, he follows up with this advice: just go hit golf balls.

That’s good advice for my younger, golfing-self: don’t worry about what clubs you have, what balls you’re hitting, etc. Ignore all that and just go practice.

And I think that’s good advice to my younger current self as a maker of websites: don’t worry so much about what hardware you have, what others are doing, what “data” proves which tool or framework is best. Ignore all that and just go build websites.