"That will never work"

Well, today is the anniversary of another interesting event. On this day in 1936, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy debuted on the radio. Younger people may wonder who they were and why that is so special and other people, who know about the successful career of Edgar Bergen might say, "So, what?" Well, the reason this has always struck me funny is that Edgar Bergen was a ventriloqust and Charlie McCarthy was his dummy. A ventriloquist on the radio? Even I could be a ventriloquist on the radio. After all, no one could see if I was moving my lips or not. "Now I'm going to drink some water while my dummy continues to speak." Yeah, how would they know?

It's not really as silly as it seems. Back in the 1930s, radio shows had studio audiences. So, yes, people would see if Edgar was moving his lips. Also, no, I couldn't be a ventriloquist on the radio today even without a studio audience because I'm just not funny (just ask the doctor who operated on my nose). Edgar Bergen honed his act onstage for many years before he was good enough for a national audience. After his successful debut, he got his own radio show - because he used Charlie McCarthy to great effect. It always reminded me of Bob Newhart and his use of the telephone in his act. You only heard one side of the conversation but he got you to infer what the person on the other end of the line was saying.

A friend of mine I used to work with is a good programmer and wanted to see if he could write a programming book. At that time, the Java programming language had been out for a while and many books had already been written about it. But it was still gaining a share of the programming population and as it grew, it was getting more complex as new features were added. So, my friend decided to write a book on one aspect of Java. But our Director of Engineering downplayed what my friend was going to be doing as if everything had already been written about Java. In the end, this was far from the truth and my friend went on to finish his book. I found it to be very useful and thought it was well written. And, at the time, there were no books written on that particular subject. And even today, new books are being written about Java as new features and libraries of routines continue to be added to the language.

So, I always try to remember these things when people tell me that something I'm thinking about will never work. If you do it well and find an angle that someone else hasn't thought about or hasn't done as well, you always have a chance to succeed.