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> I am getting paid to get things done in a good manner. If I wanted to have a house built for me, I would not expect to pay somebody and immediately have them
by username90 6y ago
> I am getting paid to get things done in a good manner. If I wanted to have a house built for me, I would not expect to pay somebody and immediately have them start laying bricks without them looking at the land, taking soil samples, sketching up drafts of what the house should look like within the constraints available, and then plan the foundation of which to start building.
In the software world most of those would be accomplished by coding though. You code up prototypes, show them to people, ask questions, test performance, test the different dependencies etc. Making a big design up front as you suggest instead of just coding prototypes is naive and wastes time. It is a good way to look productive to management though, I give you that.
- throwaway789394 6y agoDon’t code a prototype!! All your credibility is lost. Get feedback from stakeholders using a mock-up. Iterate on a sketch. Use that to design features, design schemas, break work down and plan deliverables. For the love of god, step away from the IDE
- sanderjd 6y agoI dunno, if one of my team members was constantly coding up non viable prototypes instead of communicating with people, writing up proposed solutions and alternatives, and seeking a bit of consensus first, that would strike me as a much worse waste of time.
- z92 6y agoPrototyping takes less time than writing up the requirement in paper. And customers can give more accurate feedback watching the prototype than reading the docs. It rarely happens that once a prototype is written, the developer finds out it was all a wastage and the customer wanted something quite different. Think of the prototype as a Photoshop mock, but interactive like the real application.
- slumpt_ 6y agoYou aren’t writing up UX requirements. You’re writing system designs. If you’ve never had to write down and get feedback on a system design that is entirely okay, but as you work on projects of increasing complexity and scope, it becomes more and more important to plan before you write. The prototypes you’re describing are primarily useful for UX iteration, not system design.
- 0xEFF 6y agoA short system design doc with a working prototype is vastly superior to a 50 page design doc with no code. Think of it as the scale model of the house in the original example. It’s a way for sake holder to see and feel what they’re going to get.
- corytheboyd 6y agoControversial as it may be I completely agree. Maybe I’m just not on the same god tier level as the rest of you but I have done the days/weeks of planning carefully without touching anything close to code “because you’re not supposed to” and there still ends up being things we didn’t think through that become obvious at implementation time. I agree that coding and planning don’t have to be mutually exclusive
- tsimionescu 6y agoSure, but a few days of intense dedicated discussions /white boarding with a handful of senior engineers can save you from throwing a bunch of different prototypes at a wall to see which one sticks.
- joubert 6y agoThought travels faster than pen on paper travels faster than code ok editor.
- lolinder 6y agoPrototypes are useful when you already have a pretty clear picture for what you're trying to build and just need to figure out how it's going to work. If you have yet to validate that you understand the what, you're better off talking and whiteboarding than taking time to code up a prototype.
- pjmlp 6y agoCoding prototypes without design direction, that is the real time waster from my point of view.