6 ms·
> first try to make it work to spec In my professional experience, the only spec you get is a wishlist, never quantified, always vague. Half the work is figuri
by vegetablepotpie 2y ago
> first try to make it work to spec
In my professional experience, the only spec you get is a wishlist, never quantified, always vague. Half the work is figuring out what the customer wants.
The only metric that anyone cares about is speed. You need to go fast, but to where? There is no consensus.
- rrr_oh_man 2y agoIf quick and dirty gets you 10 shots, while slow and beautiful gets you 1, I’d choose quick & dirty any day.
- rnewme 2y agoThat's not how you build big important, expensive things, though. It all depends on the context.
- doomslice 2y agoDo you know that the big expensive thing is what your customers actually need? Do you actually know what your customers need? That’s basically the only important context. If you can’t deliver that, it doesn’t matter how well thought through, extensible, or scalable it is.
- ericjmorey 2y agoIt seems that the biggest, most important, and most expensive things are built like that.
- philipov 2y agoLike bridges and skyscrapers?
- Dan42 2y agoAn order of magnitude is a bit much. I'd say quick and dirty gets you 3 shots, while slow and beautiful gets you 1. And if you succeed, it means the result is dirty/ugly code that must be maintained forever.
- Jensson 2y agoDoing it many times tend to be much cleaner than trying to get it right the first time. So fast -> clean, slow -> ugly code, as long as you use the speed to redo and clean things up.
- berniedurfee 2y agoExcept the redo and cleanup part never happens. The PoC becomes a pilot becomes production becomes an exit becomes someone else’s problem. That’s the SLDC that has gotten us to a place with endless amounts of terrible software everywhere you look. Though, I’m optimistic that at some point, the software industry will be so saturated, all the products have all the features, and the only place left to differentiate or disrupt will be quality.
- andrewflnr 2y ago10 shots facing the wrong direction still gives 10 guaranteed misses. At least make sure which cardinal direction the target is in.
- makerdiety 2y agoIf a large portion of software development is the attempt to discover what is a minimally viable product, then software development is not pure software development. It would be startup business development. That makes real programming to be something like obscure operating system development. So it's a conflict of names, a matter of proper identification.
- Terr_ 2y ago> Half the work is figuring out what the customer wants. And a substantial portion of the rest is telling them why they might be better off asking for something a little different.
- fuzzy2 2y agoI don't see how that's a problem. It's not for everyone, yes, but I like it a lot. Talking directly to the customer allows me to create exactly what the customer needs, without any convoluted process. If that's not for you, you need at least a requirement engineer between you and the customer. That's also okay. From my experience, getting things done quick is almost never relevant. Getting things done “cheap” is.