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Yes but the problem is that engineering projects tend to consist of two halves. There is the first 90% of the work and there is the second 90% of the work.
by huijzer 3y ago
Yes but the problem is that engineering projects tend to consist of two halves. There is the first 90% of the work and there is the second 90% of the work.
- huijzer 3y agoCan we start calling "evangelism" "sales" again, by the way? Someone who calls themselves an "evangelist" is a salesperson, or someone who studied theology.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Someone who calls themselves an "evangelist" is a salesperson, or someone who studied theology. While both come from religion, an evangelist is not the same thing as a theologian.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wumms 3y ago> evangelist - religion: a person who tries to persuade people to become Christians, often by travelling around and organizing religious meetings - opinions: someone who often talks about how good they think something is, and tries to persuade you to have the same opinion - religion: one of the writers of the four books in the Bible about Jesus Christ https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuch/englisch/evangelist https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuch/englisch/evan...
- darkclouds 3y agoAnd yet they omit Lawyers in front of juries and Lexicographers writing the next edition of a dictionary. Is there any logic to this exceptional world?
- hgsgm 3y agoYes, but it's fuzzy.
- darkclouds 3y agoThat asserts that the degrees of truth in fuzzy logic relates to paths and that asserts paths are fixed. A form of lazy computing when resources are finite for a reason, and nullifies the existence of quantum physics.
- pessimizer 3y agoPeople who are paid to have an opinion don't count.
- monooso 3y agoFor me, at least, sales implies a commercial offering. You could argue that "sales" just means "I'm trying to sell you on (using|supporting|believing in) this thing", but I think evangelism is a more suitable term in a non-commercial context.
- phkahler 3y agoEvangelists are selling themselves while promoting something.
- detourdog 3y agoMy perspective Guy Kawasaki was the first tech exec. with that title at Apple. His job was to figure out what different groups of users were doing and what they needed. This was instrumental in developing desktop publishing industry. I agree the term is dated and should be retired.
- mlok 3y agoNot the same things : Sales goal is to get listener's money. Evangelism goal is to convert listeners into new supporters / enthusiasts.
- hutzlibu 3y ago"Evangelism goal is to convert listeners into new supporters / enthusiasts." And they buy things. But I agree that marketing would be a better term in many cases.
- Brian_K_White 3y agoI evangelize the concepts of open source and avoiding giving up your data. Meaning any time I think it's topical and not annoying, I spout the opinions and the reasons for them. As far as I can tell I have no "buy things" motivation. I am not trying to get my sister in law to hire me to install and maintain an asterisk phone system or an instance of nextcloud or add a custom feature to vlc etc. Nor do I do those things in general where I would benefit indirectly if more people wanted those services generally.
- nickserv 3y agoThere's a difference between someone who genuinely believes what they are evangelizing, and paying marketing people to spread some corporate opinion. The OP is referring to the second type I think. Of course the two are not mutually exclusive, you could have an evangelist job for an open source company selling data protection software/services for example.
- bjornasm 3y agoIts the same things, they are just selling the concept and the product, not just the product.
- inopinatus 3y agoSoftware theologians are called “architects”.
- mikrl 3y agoWhat, you don’t want to spread the good word of our lord and saviour… software???
- Nition 3y agoFrom the title I thought this article was going to be advocating for stopping at 90%. I was thinking to myself that makes pretty good sense, I could get through twice the amount of projects .
- SoftTalker 3y agoAgree. If projects regularly achieved 90% of what they set out to achieve, that would be fantastic. My experience is that 40% is more typical, for the ones that aren't canceled before they deliver anything.
- skeeter2020 3y agoworse, it's not a cohesive 40%, but a long tail percentage complete of numerous features: 90% of feature A, 67% of B, 1-30% of countless more...
- js8 3y agoI think we can all agree on the fundamental truth that taking out the 90% of the software system leaves you with the 90% of the software system.
- HPsquared 3y agoIt's a bit like the Pareto principle. 20% of the work takes 80% of the time.
- renegade-otter 3y agoYes, it's the 90-90 rule. It has its own Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety–ninety_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety–ninety_rule "The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time."
- coolgoose 3y agoI always knew it as the 80/20 rule :D
- mathgeek 3y agoThat’s the Pareto Principle. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
- mhluongo 3y agoSo is 90/10.
- skeeter2020 3y agoread the thread again; it's the 90/90 rule.
- mathgeek 3y agoThe wikipedia page for the 90/90 rule quite literally says “not to be confused with the 90/10 rule”.
- throw310822 3y agoStrange, I knew a less humorous (and, I think, more useful and realistic) rule: 80% of the work is completed in 20% of the total development time; while the remaining 20% of work consumes 80% of the time. And this is something I've seen again and again: the large, most impactful features and architecture of a system are designed and implemented fairly quickly; it's the many small details get forever to be defined and implemented accurately.
- Animats 3y agoIndeed. It's the curse of open source projects. So many projects get to the point where it sort of works, and then the authors, having done all the fun stuff, get bored and quit. So the project never reaches the Just Works stage.
- gwd 3y agoI remember reading an essay by Brookes, where he makes the distinction between a "program", which can basically only be used by the one who wrote it (or with their help); a "product", which can be used by anyone; and a "system", which is more general-purpose and reliable. His point was that the first is fairly easy for one person to do in their spare time; the last often takes years of polish, debugging, extensions, and so on. And for academic work in particular, going from "prototype good enough to get numbers out of" to "product someone can reliably use" is a huge amount of effort, along which there are zero papers. EDIT: Here's a summary: A program is just a set of instructions that seems to do what you want. All programmers say "Oh, I can easily beat the 10 lines / day cited by industrial programmers." They are talking about just coding something, not building a product. A product (more useful than a program): * can be run, tested, repaired by anyone * usable in many environments on many sets of data. * must be tested * documentation Brooks estimates a 3x cost increase for this. To be a component in a programming system (collection of interacting programs like an OS): * input and output must conform in syntax, semantics to defined interfaces * must operate within resource budget * must be tested with other components to check integration (very expensive since interactions grows exponentially in n). Brooks estimates that this too costs 3x. A combined programming system product is 9x more costly than a program. https://www.cs.usfca.edu/~parrt/course/601/lectures/man.month.html#:~:text=A%20product%20(more%20useful%20than,must%20be%20tested https://www.cs.usfca.edu/~parrt/course/601/lectures/man.mont...
- rednab 3y agoThe way I've explained this to coworkers and stakeholders is, "A prototype costs 1x, a product costs 3x, and a platform costs 9x." Not exactly the definitions Brooks used, but memorable and in my experience surprisingly accurate.
- hgsgm 3y ago3 is far too small.
- didgetmaster 3y ago
- amelius 3y agoYou can use divide and conquer on that! The first 90% is work that is composed of 90%+90%. And the second 90% too. So you end up with .9*(90%+90%)+.9*(90%+90%). Oh wait.