4 ms·
I tell my junior devs this heuristic: "whenever someone says the word 'just', that is going to be the hardest part of the project". Is it always the case? No
by sophacles 10y ago
I tell my junior devs this heuristic: "whenever someone says the word 'just', that is going to be the hardest part of the project".
Is it always the case? No
Is it frequently the case? Yes
The reason I found is that the person doing the explaining is:
* hand waving over some complicated detail (e.g "just get the info from the accounting software", but there's no API for that software)
* thinking fuzzy (e.g. conflicting requirements "just update the struct" when doing so adds a race condition or is updating an immutable object)
* forgetting that computers and humans have different notions of "easy". (e.g "You just have to pick the person's faces out of the image") (I should probably update my example here)
It's almost always worth further exploration into what the other person means by "just do..." as an up-front exercise.
- BenoitP 10y agoI'd expand the jar to include "Simple" alongside "Just". I have learned over the years that Simple means: no one has spent time thinking about it. Simple means you are going to have to implement it alone, and take business decisions that aren't yours to take (and have to maintain the associated unstable code). On top of that people are going to question your abilities for taking so long.