“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

This Abraham Maslow fellow doesn’t just have a pyramid, he also has a hammer. Here is the popular phrasing of Maslow’s Hammer.

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Maybe Maslow

I love this saying. People often “hammer away” at something the wrong way, wasting time and failing to learn a new skill.

It’s easy to make this mistake.

As a software engineer, I’ve seen this 1000 times. “Well, we have a bunch of web servers, and we need a mobile app, so… let’s make our mobile app using web tech!” At first, it seems to make sense. But you end up with a crappy app, lots of extra work, and maybe even some unhappy developers who leave because they care about their career too much. They want to use Xcode because that’s a great tool for making apps.

(But beware, Xcode could become your next hammer. 🤷🏻‍♂️)