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> People do not on the whole pay for — or need — generality: they tend to have a specific situation, and it is a solution to that specific situation that has va
by nnq 9y ago
> People do not on the whole pay for — or need — generality: they tend to have a specific situation, and it is a solution to that specific situation that has value
Yeah, but otoh, most progress in science and tech has been made by sort-of-tricking people into paying for stuff that solve a slightly more interesting/general problem than the original boring problem they wanted solved.
So at least when it doesn't drown everyone in paralyzing complexity, we need to remember to keep that "hacky rascality" alive and slightly "screw" our clients at the expense of developing some general and reusable solutions (hopefully as open-source libraries :P) that will probably matter more than whatever "important" problems they want solving ;)
- jerf 9y ago"slightly more interesting/general problem" I'd say there's no great sin in solving a slightly more general problem than what you currently face. In fact, that's often net simpler almost immediately; it's not long before a function to format a URL is simpler than simply manipulating a URL every time. (Even ignoring the simpler issues.) The problem arises when you have something like "Let's see... I need a database... let's write an ORM." Whoops. (Speaking from harsh experience there.)