6 ms·

> 99 times out of 100 you are way overestimating the value of what you're delivering and people's expectations for it, and underestimating the value of time i.e

> 99 times out of 100 you are way overestimating the value of what you're delivering and people's expectations for it, and underestimating the value of time i.e. shipping quickly. Agree with this. Shipping is the most important quality. The faster you ship the faster you would be enjoying anything

groestl 3y ago
> Shipping is the most important quality. So.. Can you trick yourself into directing the perfectionism into shipping fastest?
- garrickvanburen 3y ago
  The best I’ve been able to do is: if perfection == high quality, then shipping smaller iterations faster is the most cost-effective means of improving quality.
  - groestl 3y ago
    I did that too :) I learned that sometimes, I'd ship the perfect wrong thing. And to avoid that I'd ship earlier versions faster and get back to it after feedback.
- Vinnl 3y ago
  That's roughly what I did. I often do side projects with two goals: there's something I want to exist, and something I want to learn. And I'll learn that thing by using it to build something I want. At one point, the thing I wanted to learn was "call something done". So I did that, and because it was a side project with learning as an explicit goal, I was able to actually do that - it was literally impossible to ship something imperfect, as shipping would already mean I'd perfectly reached my goal. But that turned out to be enough faking it to make it - the feeling of shipping it felt good, and gave me the confidence to spend a small amount of time to polish my side projects up enough for shipping, rather than a large amount of time to do everything I want. And it's way more fun now to be able to occasionally pull up an old side project of mine that's still usable, because I got it to a usable state in the first place. (In case anyone's interested, you can see the project, and how small its scope was, at https://agripongit.vincenttunru.com https://agripongit.vincenttunru.com.)
- gloryjulio 3y ago
  Basically I want TDD(make it run!). I want something runs and everyone can see it. Ship faster, get it run faster, get feedback faster, improve faster, iterate faster. Perfectionism comes from iterations
jopsen 3y ago
> Shipping is the most important quality. There is something to be said for the good old days when we modified PHP files in an editor over FTP :) Never done it professionally. But developing in production would make me ship faster, and using php would probably limit my tendency to make gold plated solutions.
- whstl 3y ago
  In my C# days, before CI/CD was fashionable, the pinnacle for me was using the "Deploy" button that would compile, run some tests and then deploy. Got a bug? Fix in 5 minutes. Got a typo? Seconds. Code and software quality was surprisingly better than it is today. Today? In a process heavy company with Jira, PMs and QA it can become a week-long affair, unless I (the lead developer) bypass parts of the process. The perfectionism is in the process, but the outcome is not quality. Come to think of it, perfectionism never really leads to anything of quality.
  - treszkai 3y ago
    > Come to think of it, perfectionism never really leads to anything of quality. TeX stood the test of time and it was released as close to perfection as it gets in non-life-critical software. (One could argue it wasn’t perfectionism at work, but sound top-down design.)
  - SeriousM 3y ago
    Definitely right! Three improvements of 70% quality is much more Outcome as a single improvement with 95% quality in the same time. (Let's be honest, 100% isn't reachable even for the perfect perfectionist). It even leads to more different changes and more ground to improve upon again.

groestl 3y ago

> Shipping is the most important quality. So.. Can you trick yourself into directing the perfectionism into shipping fastest?

garrickvanburen 3y ago
The best I’ve been able to do is: if perfection == high quality, then shipping smaller iterations faster is the most cost-effective means of improving quality.
- groestl 3y ago
  I did that too :) I learned that sometimes, I'd ship the perfect wrong thing. And to avoid that I'd ship earlier versions faster and get back to it after feedback.
Vinnl 3y ago
That's roughly what I did. I often do side projects with two goals: there's something I want to exist, and something I want to learn. And I'll learn that thing by using it to build something I want. At one point, the thing I wanted to learn was "call something done". So I did that, and because it was a side project with learning as an explicit goal, I was able to actually do that - it was literally impossible to ship something imperfect, as shipping would already mean I'd perfectly reached my goal. But that turned out to be enough faking it to make it - the feeling of shipping it felt good, and gave me the confidence to spend a small amount of time to polish my side projects up enough for shipping, rather than a large amount of time to do everything I want. And it's way more fun now to be able to occasionally pull up an old side project of mine that's still usable, because I got it to a usable state in the first place. (In case anyone's interested, you can see the project, and how small its scope was, at https://agripongit.vincenttunru.com https://agripongit.vincenttunru.com.)
gloryjulio 3y ago
Basically I want TDD(make it run!). I want something runs and everyone can see it. Ship faster, get it run faster, get feedback faster, improve faster, iterate faster. Perfectionism comes from iterations

jopsen 3y ago

> Shipping is the most important quality. There is something to be said for the good old days when we modified PHP files in an editor over FTP :) Never done it professionally. But developing in production would make me ship faster, and using php would probably limit my tendency to make gold plated solutions.

whstl 3y ago
In my C# days, before CI/CD was fashionable, the pinnacle for me was using the "Deploy" button that would compile, run some tests and then deploy. Got a bug? Fix in 5 minutes. Got a typo? Seconds. Code and software quality was surprisingly better than it is today. Today? In a process heavy company with Jira, PMs and QA it can become a week-long affair, unless I (the lead developer) bypass parts of the process. The perfectionism is in the process, but the outcome is not quality. Come to think of it, perfectionism never really leads to anything of quality.
- treszkai 3y ago
  > Come to think of it, perfectionism never really leads to anything of quality. TeX stood the test of time and it was released as close to perfection as it gets in non-life-critical software. (One could argue it wasn’t perfectionism at work, but sound top-down design.)
- SeriousM 3y ago
  Definitely right! Three improvements of 70% quality is much more Outcome as a single improvement with 95% quality in the same time. (Let's be honest, 100% isn't reachable even for the perfect perfectionist). It even leads to more different changes and more ground to improve upon again.