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It's not perfectionism that prevents people from reaching what's, by reasonable standards, a finish line. It's a failure to prioritize. It's perfectionism tha

It's not perfectionism that prevents people from reaching what's, by reasonable standards, a finish line. It's a failure to prioritize. It's perfectionism that prevents people from shipping what's by reasonable standards already past the finish line, because they keep redoing and polishing "good enough" things, ad infinitum. Perfectionism can be a good thing producing exceptional quality results, provided you've prioritized appropriately and are playing "perfectionist" iterating in diminishing returns land. With or without perfectionism, if you can't prioritize correctly, you'll likely fail to finish. Perfectionism causes people to over-finish and endlessly defer shipping.

nonethewiser 4y ago
I think we have different understandings of perfectionism. I don’t think perfectionism means you do something perfectly. Most of the time I think it’s not being able to trade good enough for best. Often this leads to unfinished work. Perfectionism by no means only comes into play after you have something shippable - you’d likely never get that far.
- pengaru 4y ago
  Development of anything substantial is an incremental process where parts must exist in an unfinished imperfect state for a time. Managing those priorities and letting parts exist as scaffolding and/or barely working stand-ins is a core competency of our field. e.g. You're not a perfectionist when you used expensive artist-produced "perfect" stand-in art instead of programmer art, you're just incompetent and wasting resources on stuff that won't likely make it into the shipped product. I've seen many "perfectionists" hide behind this moniker when infact they're just incompetent when it comes to prioritizing what to do, how much to do it, and in what order. You're not a perfectionist when you spent all your time making a "perfect" ECS at the expense of actually completing a playable game, when the latter was your actual goal. You're just a failure/incompetent. But "perfectionist" certainly sounds better for the ego.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    > Development of anything substantial is an incremental process where parts must exist in an unfinished imperfect state for a time. Yes, of course. That's why not being able to leave something messy/unfinished/bad is crippling. > I've seen many "perfectionists" hide behind this moniker when infact they're just incompetent when it comes to prioritizing what to do, how much to do it, and in what order. As you've identified, this thing they're calling perfectionism isn't an asset. I get the sense that you think being a perfectionist is supposed to be a good thing. It's not. It's a defect.
pengaru 4y ago
Replying to myself as it's too late to edit. A more succinct explanation came to mind while just doing some yard work: We've all heard and understood the wisdom of "premature optimization is the root of all evil", right? What's being conflated here as perfectionism is a variant of premature optimization. Perhaps we need an idiom like "Premature polishing is the root of all unfinished games".

nonethewiser 4y ago

I think we have different understandings of perfectionism. I don’t think perfectionism means you do something perfectly. Most of the time I think it’s not being able to trade good enough for best. Often this leads to unfinished work. Perfectionism by no means only comes into play after you have something shippable - you’d likely never get that far.

pengaru 4y ago
Development of anything substantial is an incremental process where parts must exist in an unfinished imperfect state for a time. Managing those priorities and letting parts exist as scaffolding and/or barely working stand-ins is a core competency of our field. e.g. You're not a perfectionist when you used expensive artist-produced "perfect" stand-in art instead of programmer art, you're just incompetent and wasting resources on stuff that won't likely make it into the shipped product. I've seen many "perfectionists" hide behind this moniker when infact they're just incompetent when it comes to prioritizing what to do, how much to do it, and in what order. You're not a perfectionist when you spent all your time making a "perfect" ECS at the expense of actually completing a playable game, when the latter was your actual goal. You're just a failure/incompetent. But "perfectionist" certainly sounds better for the ego.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  > Development of anything substantial is an incremental process where parts must exist in an unfinished imperfect state for a time. Yes, of course. That's why not being able to leave something messy/unfinished/bad is crippling. > I've seen many "perfectionists" hide behind this moniker when infact they're just incompetent when it comes to prioritizing what to do, how much to do it, and in what order. As you've identified, this thing they're calling perfectionism isn't an asset. I get the sense that you think being a perfectionist is supposed to be a good thing. It's not. It's a defect.

pengaru 4y ago

Replying to myself as it's too late to edit. A more succinct explanation came to mind while just doing some yard work: We've all heard and understood the wisdom of "premature optimization is the root of all evil", right? What's being conflated here as perfectionism is a variant of premature optimization. Perhaps we need an idiom like "Premature polishing is the root of all unfinished games".