3 ms·
This could use with being a bit shorter and maybe carved into pieces because the main idea is very powerful and the author has seen a thing or two clearly! Tha
by vasco 2y ago
This could use with being a bit shorter and maybe carved into pieces because the main idea is very powerful and the author has seen a thing or two clearly!
That being said although I agree with many things the author said, I think this phase goes a bit different:
> "You will waste so much time! Let's have a grand plan and write the perfect solution right from the start, ehh?"
The reason why bosses/ non technical people want to talk so much before and write so much non-code is because they can. If they could write code they wouldn't mind , but the "talking" phase is the only one where they can contribute and so to feel useful they actually delay everything.
This comes from an observation that difficult problems / projects sometimes were fixed much faster than easier problems.
Why? Because an easy problem is understood by everyone, so everyone has an opinion, so now we have to hear all the uninformed opinions and debate all the obviously-not gonna-works. But hard problems, they have two great properties, most people won't even understand the problem, and even if they do, they won't know what to do. So then you get one or two guys to actually fix it undisturbed.
Not only it's slower to have to deal with uninformed opinions, the outcome is often worse also, because for politeness and to avoid awkwardness you end up with an "average" of the opinions, but if majority of those are uninformed you just got a worse solution by talking.
- molteanu 2y agoIt is shorter than what I've had initially, really. And yes, these are a bunch of ideas I try to make clearer for myself, as well. Like, there is a feeling inside and you've seen things and experienced different scenarios and now you try to put them into actual words that makes sense, as a whole. If you are successful at that, that's another story. Add to that that other people's experience are different and they come from different backgrounds, things get even messier. I think there was a piece from antirez a few days ago where he was being surprised, among others, on how much harder writing is, in general, than coding. I feel the challenge of that sometimes. That being said, I appreciate your answer and insight. Edit: why did you stop writing, if I may ask you? (I'm assuming now that not publishing for the whole world to see equals not writing at all, which might not be the case)
- vasco 2y agoI really appreciated your post! I discovered HN comments and that fact that if I write something dumb on my blog nobody tells me, but if I write something dumb on HN everyone downvotes and corrects me, so I appreciate the direct feedback more than the "publishing properly" while scratching the same itch. I have several comments I bookmarked to myself that I consider "my blog post on subject X". Also it's still possible to know what I think about stuff by going through my profile as if it were a blog, but people don't do that so it's sort of privacy while in public as well.
- toolslive 2y ago> The reason why bosses/ non technical people want to talk so much before and write so much non-code is because they can. can -> can't
- vasco 2y agoBecause they can talk :)
- hirako2000 2y agoThey can. Talk, even much.