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Of course, there is the risk that everyone thinks McDonalds is a swell idea, and then no one will ever do anything nicer for lunch ever again. Not to stretch th
by flatline 13y ago
Of course, there is the risk that everyone thinks McDonalds is a swell idea, and then no one will ever do anything nicer for lunch ever again. Not to stretch the analogy too far, but I have had this happen both literally and figuratively.
- vacri 13y agoIf it backfires, then all you need to do is next time say "let's do something different".
- flatline 13y agoOnce a precedent has been established, it can be hard to change people's minds, especially if it was fast/easy/convenient the first time around. It really depends on the group.
- designflip 13y agoI think it works well in the writer's case. He knows his audience and has probably worked with them long enough to know where they like to go to eat. He's not taking the risk of McDonald's every day. There wasn't a chance that would happen anyway because even if one or two person wanted to go to McDonalds two days in a row, the group would win out and override it.
- ffn 13y agoAs the guys who usual says "that's a swell idea", or "yeah, I'm down for some McNuggets" to really gross food decisions (masochism, I don't know), I personally love it when other folks throw out these "sequestration" choices because it's usually the only way to get everyone to go to McDonalds.
- mbetter 13y agoI actually could go for some McNuggets right now.
- rmrfrmrf 13y agoYeah it's a bad sign when all this post did was make me hungry.
- hwang0214 13y agohaha amen.
- kvcrawford 13y agoRamen?
- ctdonath 13y agohttp://abuckaplate.blogspot.com/2012/08/ramen.html http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com/2012/08/ramen.html
- mikec3k 13y agoReal ramen has nothing in common with those packaged noodles. A big bowl of ramen soup with lots of meat, seafood & a hardboiled egg is heaven.
- rmrfrmrf 13y agoSee, what you do is buy the ramen packets, a bag of frozen shrimp, and a dozen eggs. Bring the water to a boil, let the ramen rehydrate, then crack an egg right into the pot. Add some frozen shrimp and let it sit for a minute, then break the yolk and stir. Cook until the yolk solidifies and serve. Duh.
- run4yourlives 13y agoIt's probably a lot cheaper and easier to go and buy Chinese noodles if that is the end result.
- ripter 13y agoAnd that's how I discovered the McRib
- modarts 13y agoExactly. I can't even begin to tell you how many times something that was supposed to be "just be a prototype" made it to production this same way.
- weinzierl 13y agoYou bet. I'm working on an application that is a prototype and a legacy application simultaneously.
- aurelianito 13y agoMe too.
- rmc 13y agoThere's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.
- vagarwa 13y agoSo much wisdom packed into so few words!
- ripter 13y agoI've wondered if there is any production software that wasn't "just a prototype"
- alxp 13y agoThere's a fable warning about the problem of throwing out a suggestion because you think one needs to be made, and then everyone going along with it because it's what they think the group wants, when no individual actually wants to do that thing. It's called the Abilene Paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox
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- incompatible 13y agoWikipedia is actually a great example of how getting something started can eventually lead to something much better. Here's the first version of that article: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Abilene_paradox&oldid=904222 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Abilene_paradox... That's what Wikipedia was like after it was created: random people writing a few words about some subject they thought they knew something about. It didn't seem like it would amount to much, at the time.
- pekk 13y agoMaybe it hasn't amounted to as much as you think. In addition to a great deal of general information substantially duplicating what you already could have found on the internet (much of Wikipedia is actually scraped/aggregated from elsewhere, which is the real use of crowdsourcing here), it's also jammed full of trivialities and utterly biased, misleading, politicized articles guarded jealously by special interest groups. All those interest groups together form one giant defensive cabal which rejects criticism of Wikipedia and is constantly begging for money to sustain itself. Because it's democratic, you see, and not dominated by those egghead academic experts (but rather by Wikipedia experts, who established their tenure by making an account and writing rarely-verified information to Wikipedia in a way that complied with the politics of Wikipedia incumbents). Wikipedia could have put effort into seriously verifying incoming information, but that would have made it an elitist affair like academia. Or it could have seriously taken everything democratically, which would have made it a total populist mess. Instead it created its own insular oligarchy to tell everyone what is true or not. And the appointments of this oligarchy are utterly opaque, but they definitely aren't based on any combination of merit and democracy.
- mseebach 13y agoIf everybody (but you, presumably) is happy with McDonald's then the onus is on you to change their minds. The trick only works when there is a consensus to strive higher. If you fail to do that, then, eventually, you will have to say "screw you guys, I'll go to the ramen-place alone then".
- aflinik 13y agoIf you had a better idea you should have started with it in the first place. It should work equally well as a creativity trigger, and if nobody comes up with something different you still end up with a choice that's not so bad.
- jonb 13y agoIndeed. Steve Jobs apparently said "The name of the company is Apple unless you can think of something better by tomorrow." And they couldn't.
- run4yourlives 13y agoIf everyone thinks McDonald's is a swell idea, it probably is. This means that either A) Lunch isn't as important as everyone seems to make it out to be , or B) McDonald's is "good enough" or C) some combination of factors including A and B that suggest worrying about where you are eating for lunch isn't worth any of your time today.