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This one here is a slightly different case to "intentional but mistaken". It is however one I've seen in software engineering environments: Person A designs som
by ehmish 8y ago
This one here is a slightly different case to "intentional but mistaken". It is however one I've seen in software engineering environments: Person A designs something (in this case it's a gun, in software it could be an architectural pattern), Person B then insists on adjusting it, either ignoring or misunderstanding Person A's idea, and the result is something that is quite flawed. The best solution I think for these sorts of problems is for either Person A to be in a position of authority such that Person B _can't_ modify the design, or for Person A to design it exactly how Person B expects it to be designed.
- ethbro 8y agoI think the latter is the only tenable solution. The former presupposes that A is right, which is unknown a priori. It could very well be that A made a mistake, and B caught and corrected it! Or that B had a flash of genius and saw a better way that A missed. Which is how we arrived at, and still use in physical engineering, waterfall design. Its strengths were never meant to be adaptability to customer needs, but rather fully specified and communicated interfaces between components. Which is not nothing.
- ehmish 8y agoThe former has happened a number of times, for example with Kelly Johnston and Lockheed martin's Skunk Works, or many other institutions with charismatic dictatatorial engineers at the helm (Tesla, Linux, Microsoft). I'm definitely not saying that their respective leaders don't make bad decisions, but rather that a suboptimal solution, consistently implemented results in a better outcome than an inconsistent solution "optimised" by individuals along the way.