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Prototyping alternative solutions is a cheap way to help uncover trade-offs, and you can do this independently. Attending retrospectives after things go wrong
by cbetti 6y ago
Prototyping alternative solutions is a cheap way to help uncover trade-offs, and you can do this independently.
Attending retrospectives after things go wrong is a good way for experts to introduce their thought processes to less experienced engineers.
Asking "why?" when senior engineers deliver feedback during design review can help you learn that a trade-off existed when you did not see it.
- hinkley 6y agoI once was trying to design a validation framework. I thought it should work this way. The other lead thought it should work that way. So I proposed we write some sample code for these APIs and show it to the team. TDD with pseudocode before any of us knew what TDD was. Only, I didn’t like having two to chose from. Something told me three would be better. So we paired, I wrote mine, then hers, then just made another one up on the spot. Once we agreed they were complete and implementable, I shopped them to the team. About 2/3rds preferred the made up one. Including me. So that’s what I implemented.
- brazzy 6y agoGreat story! Not a huge surprise when you think about it - you made up the the third design just after thinking through the other two in detail.