4 ms·

A hundred percent, but sometimes we need to deliver the first feature in order for there even to be a company around to deliver the hundredth.

hinkley 4y ago
Nobody is talking about process for the first feature. Not in this conversation, not in the real world. That's all you. There's always a reason why we should do feature n+1 the same way we did feature n. At some point you have to say stop. You also have to realize that the 'will there be a company around' talk is usually a fiction that gets more work out of the developers. It's a rallying cry, not a statement of fact. Companies run on momentum much of the time. The moment you died isn't the moment the money ran out. It's the moment you didn't avert the money running out. See also 'default dead'. There's a lot of ways to kill a company. Loss of velocity is one of them, and that is dictated most often by tech debt and morale. Eventually the people good at cleaning up messes get tired of only cleaning up messes, and they burn out or leave.
- tomlockwood 4y ago
  Like I said, there's a bunch of people out there with a "code purity complex where their way of doing things is superior even if the actual code Works".
  - hinkley 4y ago
    You’re just repeating a mantra not engaging. Mostly what I deal with are people whose arguments boil down to “works for me” even when there’s evidence that it doesn’t. Thinking about improvement is hard, and a lot of people find a fictional success to be more fun than an objective one. We shouldn’t confuse “rewarding things are difficult” with “difficult things are rewarding” or “people who want difficult things are difficult people”. Most people are gaming the system. While pretending to play an infinite game, they’re mostly worried about getting the next paycheck with as little hassle as possible. Everybody does this to an extent, but many people make enemies of their future selves, which is not healthy. Then they run away from the problems they created, talking a big talk about Progress and bigger and better things when we all know they’re going to make the same mess again and again. Instead of doing the grownup thing and cleaning up their own messes. They get the same 3 years of experience five times in a row and call it 15 YOE.
    - tomlockwood 4y ago
      > You’re just repeating a mantra not engaging. That's an interesting perspective because I feel like the things you're saying are not addressing that point: that "code purity" is a self-limiting and often self-congratulatory mantra.

hinkley 4y ago

Nobody is talking about process for the first feature. Not in this conversation, not in the real world. That's all you. There's always a reason why we should do feature n+1 the same way we did feature n. At some point you have to say stop. You also have to realize that the 'will there be a company around' talk is usually a fiction that gets more work out of the developers. It's a rallying cry, not a statement of fact. Companies run on momentum much of the time. The moment you died isn't the moment the money ran out. It's the moment you didn't avert the money running out. See also 'default dead'. There's a lot of ways to kill a company. Loss of velocity is one of them, and that is dictated most often by tech debt and morale. Eventually the people good at cleaning up messes get tired of only cleaning up messes, and they burn out or leave.

tomlockwood 4y ago
Like I said, there's a bunch of people out there with a "code purity complex where their way of doing things is superior even if the actual code Works".
- hinkley 4y ago
  You’re just repeating a mantra not engaging. Mostly what I deal with are people whose arguments boil down to “works for me” even when there’s evidence that it doesn’t. Thinking about improvement is hard, and a lot of people find a fictional success to be more fun than an objective one. We shouldn’t confuse “rewarding things are difficult” with “difficult things are rewarding” or “people who want difficult things are difficult people”. Most people are gaming the system. While pretending to play an infinite game, they’re mostly worried about getting the next paycheck with as little hassle as possible. Everybody does this to an extent, but many people make enemies of their future selves, which is not healthy. Then they run away from the problems they created, talking a big talk about Progress and bigger and better things when we all know they’re going to make the same mess again and again. Instead of doing the grownup thing and cleaning up their own messes. They get the same 3 years of experience five times in a row and call it 15 YOE.
  - tomlockwood 4y ago
    > You’re just repeating a mantra not engaging. That's an interesting perspective because I feel like the things you're saying are not addressing that point: that "code purity" is a self-limiting and often self-congratulatory mantra.