3 ms·

Early drafts of great work are encouraging

32 points by sivers 17y ago

yan 17y ago
I also love seeing code repositories in early version. Seeing a code base grow and become polished is encouraging, especially looking at a mess of functions in the first few days of my projects.
10ren 17y ago
I agree growing things is the way to go, and it's worked for me. Mistakes in some areas are harder to fix, such as in public APIs that others rely on - but they still can be fixed by deprecating older approaches. It's painful; but perhaps even worse to keep delaying til it's perfect... A hard one is patents: you can't patent after launching, selling or even demoing it publicly, so you have to finalize the design well-enough to describe it in detail, without the benefit of experience with actual users. You can file a provisional application beforehand, but it has to be as complete as a full application, because you can't add materially to it. I Believe that in the USA, you can apply up to a year after inventing it, but you'll still need sufficiently good documentation to be able to prove that the invention date, if challenged. A meticulously kept notebook is probably sufficient.
sharpn 17y ago
If you like great poetry check out the drafts of Wilfred Owen's 'Anthem for a Doomed Youth' - Sigfreid Sassoon helped him redraft it into possibly the most iconic WW1 poem, but the original version was relatively weak. Fascinating to see the changes, for example: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/topic1b/2anthem.htm http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/topic1b/2ant...
grandalf 17y ago
This is a superb point. I recall the first time I went to a museum and saw pencil "studies" of famous works of art... it really brings the whole process of art down to earth and you realize it's a simple, creative but iterative process, much like software engineering.
mkn 17y ago
Karma be damned! Video in article is best watched while drunk.
Confusion 17y ago
As I commented when the link to pg writing his essay, that this story cites as an example, was submitted to Reddit: I think it [is] rather encouraging to would-be writers to see that someone that is [..] succesful rewrites his sentences many times. It can be quite disheartening to find it necessary to rewrite the same bit over and over again, if you suffer from the illusion that good writers pen down everything in one go.

32 points by sivers 17y ago

yan 17y ago

I also love seeing code repositories in early version. Seeing a code base grow and become polished is encouraging, especially looking at a mess of functions in the first few days of my projects.

10ren 17y ago

I agree growing things is the way to go, and it's worked for me. Mistakes in some areas are harder to fix, such as in public APIs that others rely on - but they still can be fixed by deprecating older approaches. It's painful; but perhaps even worse to keep delaying til it's perfect... A hard one is patents: you can't patent after launching, selling or even demoing it publicly, so you have to finalize the design well-enough to describe it in detail, without the benefit of experience with actual users. You can file a provisional application beforehand, but it has to be as complete as a full application, because you can't add materially to it. I Believe that in the USA, you can apply up to a year after inventing it, but you'll still need sufficiently good documentation to be able to prove that the invention date, if challenged. A meticulously kept notebook is probably sufficient.

sharpn 17y ago

If you like great poetry check out the drafts of Wilfred Owen's 'Anthem for a Doomed Youth' - Sigfreid Sassoon helped him redraft it into possibly the most iconic WW1 poem, but the original version was relatively weak. Fascinating to see the changes, for example: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/topic1b/2anthem.htm http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/topic1b/2ant...

grandalf 17y ago

This is a superb point. I recall the first time I went to a museum and saw pencil "studies" of famous works of art... it really brings the whole process of art down to earth and you realize it's a simple, creative but iterative process, much like software engineering.

mkn 17y ago

Karma be damned! Video in article is best watched while drunk.

Confusion 17y ago

As I commented when the link to pg writing his essay, that this story cites as an example, was submitted to Reddit: I think it [is] rather encouraging to would-be writers to see that someone that is [..] succesful rewrites his sentences many times. It can be quite disheartening to find it necessary to rewrite the same bit over and over again, if you suffer from the illusion that good writers pen down everything in one go.