2 ms·

No but it lets you iterate faster. Who hasn't come up wit the most perfect elegant design, only to come up against three reality of implement and an "oh we forg

No but it lets you iterate faster. Who hasn't come up wit the most perfect elegant design, only to come up against three reality of implement and an "oh we forgot about that" aspect. Except by then, it's too late to change, so you march on. Writing code faster lets you find the things you didn't think of faster so then you get to design it again but better this time.

marginalia_nu 4mo ago
That sort of trial and error design seems like a really unprofessional way of working.
- williamcotton 4mo ago
  Why? Trial and error is a pretty important component of creativity.
- fragmede 4mo ago
  The waterfall method of software development is well studied and while agile is no panacea, there's a reason the industry has moved away from multi-year waterfall development practices.
  - marginalia_nu 4mo ago
    Agile is in now way incompatible with measuring before you cut.
- disgruntledphd2 4mo ago
  It used to be, before LLMs. It was standard practice though. If you have a bad design that's had contact with reality for a while, it's much easier to make it actually good, rather than figure stuff out up front (I've rarely made this work, even though I'd love to).
skydhash 4mo ago
> Who hasn't come up wit the most perfect elegant design, only to come up against three reality of implement and an "oh we forgot about that" aspect The mistake here is trying to come up with the most elegant design. You solve for what’s needed with the knowledge that you’ve most likely not captured the full situation, and make allowance for future changes. I don’t want faster code. What I want is flexibility in evolving my design and there’s plenty of good tools and practices for that. From ensuring your code is testable to ensuring there are easy ways to experiment with parts of it. I’ve never been in a situation that says “We’ve not think of that, we need to get back to the drawing board”, It’s been mostly “We need a new version of this module to support this feature”
- themgt 4mo ago
  > I’ve never been in a situation that says “We’ve not think of that, we need to get back to the drawing board” And you're somehow able to post on HN from within the time crystal?
  - skydhash 4mo ago
    Lol, I just don’t rush into coding when I could talk with the customer/user (or Product). And I shape my codebase into something I can easily experiment upon. Which means I try for it to be modular with suitable abstraction that I can easily tweak.

marginalia_nu 4mo ago

That sort of trial and error design seems like a really unprofessional way of working.

williamcotton 4mo ago
Why? Trial and error is a pretty important component of creativity.
fragmede 4mo ago
The waterfall method of software development is well studied and while agile is no panacea, there's a reason the industry has moved away from multi-year waterfall development practices.
- marginalia_nu 4mo ago
  Agile is in now way incompatible with measuring before you cut.
disgruntledphd2 4mo ago
It used to be, before LLMs. It was standard practice though. If you have a bad design that's had contact with reality for a while, it's much easier to make it actually good, rather than figure stuff out up front (I've rarely made this work, even though I'd love to).

skydhash 4mo ago

> Who hasn't come up wit the most perfect elegant design, only to come up against three reality of implement and an "oh we forgot about that" aspect The mistake here is trying to come up with the most elegant design. You solve for what’s needed with the knowledge that you’ve most likely not captured the full situation, and make allowance for future changes. I don’t want faster code. What I want is flexibility in evolving my design and there’s plenty of good tools and practices for that. From ensuring your code is testable to ensuring there are easy ways to experiment with parts of it. I’ve never been in a situation that says “We’ve not think of that, we need to get back to the drawing board”, It’s been mostly “We need a new version of this module to support this feature”

themgt 4mo ago
> I’ve never been in a situation that says “We’ve not think of that, we need to get back to the drawing board” And you're somehow able to post on HN from within the time crystal?
- skydhash 4mo ago
  Lol, I just don’t rush into coding when I could talk with the customer/user (or Product). And I shape my codebase into something I can easily experiment upon. Which means I try for it to be modular with suitable abstraction that I can easily tweak.