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Comment by rglover | Hacker News Reader

I hope everyone is catching on to what 37signals is doing: building significant brand awareness before the launch of a new product. Notice that they've been posting more frequently, with varying content (and of course a bit of Basecamp Next peppered in). Really subtle, but it puts them in the minds of a lot of people.

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I don't think it's subtle at all. My primary knowledge of 37signals is as the company that spends an inordinate amount of time on Hacker News telling everyone how great it and its methods are.

Yep... Having never been a fan of their work myself, I do not check anymore their posts on HN. Still I enjoy reading some of the comments associated with the post, it can be enlightening.

To add to your point, being a (self proclaimed) nerd and not a geek: I don't care about new technologies, I do not own a smartphone, hell, I don't have anymore Facebook or Twitter, I found what's posted on 37signals very boring and devoid of interesting information. I am, however, surprised by the huge number of people that upvote these kind of posts.

To answer the article without really reading it, and again it's because of my nerdy side I don't care on what I am working as long as I have a desk, an OK mouse, an OK screen, and OK keyboard, that's it, I am happy.

Phew, I'm not alone! I'm sure posting so much here is part of their content/marketing strategy, and that bores me to death. Very aggressive and totally boring marketing strategy. But seeing how many upvote their articles, I guess it works.

  > I don't care on what I am working as long as I have a desk,
  > an OK mouse, an OK screen, and OK keyboard, that's it, I am
  > happy.

I think with attitude like this it is very difficult to build a GOOD product. "Meh" most likely. But other nerds may consider it to be OK though. OTOH, I don't think that being nerdy should necesarry mean "not caring how good something is".

I tend to disagree: from what I have seen having a lot of "pluses" is more a distraction from actual thinking that a plus in terms of productivity. Same goes with a lot of things in life, the amount you invest (in time/ money) for the extra luxury generally outweighs the benefits of a simple and effective solution.

Also I can't really see the correlation between building a good product and a desk or its organization. What build a good product is a good team, a good organization, good and proven tools. It reminds of a story with a friend, this guy was quite rich and was trying to learn guitar, so when he started he bought a $3000+ guitar (Martin D20 or something approaching), but given his skills a 1000 or even $500 dollars guitar could have suited his needs for the next 5 years. He didn't play better than somebody else with better tools, maybe worse because of the complexity of repairing the guitar. What drives the product is the skill of the programmer, the tools are secondary.

But I might be wrong!

The difference between your friends guitar story and most of HNs computer usage is that your friend was just trying to learn guitar while most HNers use a computer as a job. I think you would agree that someone whose job it is to play guitar should probably spend (money doesn't equal quality, but just using it as a point) whatever they think is necessary to have the best guitar for them.

When it comes to using a computer all day, every day, having great (not just okay) input devices, and great (not just okay) monitors not only can make you more productive, but also save your eyes and prevent RSI. Desks also fall into this category of saving your actual health.

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