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William Deming famously said that when focus is on quality, quality rises and costs fall. And that when focus is cost, costs rise and quality falls. We live in

William Deming famously said that when focus is on quality, quality rises and costs fall. And that when focus is cost, costs rise and quality falls. We live in a time where we're encouraged to make mistakes. Refactoring, fail fast and often... I get the impression sometimes that we can go on failing forever and its ok. Everything is awesome. Because its fun writing code right? Just jumping in there and not giving a thought to the step after the next. Managing complexity? JAGNI. My tests passed, didn't they? And we can always refactor. Getting it right takes discipline, research and experience. I prefer to get it right first time. Doesn't always work out as planned, but to me the need to refactor is a sign to stop and reassess what brought me to that point. And its always a result of having cut a corner somewhere. Refactoring costs. And upfront design is about as fashionable as leg warmers.

mhomde 12y ago
I feel like we're talking about different things... Continuous refactoring IS focusing on quality, it IS managing complexity. I think you've seriously misunderstood Deming if you think he stood for "Do it perfect from the start". The whole Kaizen philosophy is built on continuous improvement and elimination of waste (redundant code) I'm not saying do a week/month/year of crappy coding and then "fix it later". Refactor continuously and as often as needed. Writing code is research. The cost of refactoring is the greatest when you've done it too seldom. Otherwise with the right tools it's pretty efficient these days. I see larger dangers in doing up front architect astronauting and make decisions before you've internalized all the problems. For complex project it's of course appropriate to gather requirements, limitations etc and make a rough design, but going into too much detail is setting the cart before the horse... IMHO of course.
- Spearchucker 12y ago
  One of the coolest things I've learnt after over 20 years in this industry is to seek first to understand, and then to be understood. We're talking about the same thing.

mhomde 12y ago

I feel like we're talking about different things... Continuous refactoring IS focusing on quality, it IS managing complexity. I think you've seriously misunderstood Deming if you think he stood for "Do it perfect from the start". The whole Kaizen philosophy is built on continuous improvement and elimination of waste (redundant code) I'm not saying do a week/month/year of crappy coding and then "fix it later". Refactor continuously and as often as needed. Writing code is research. The cost of refactoring is the greatest when you've done it too seldom. Otherwise with the right tools it's pretty efficient these days. I see larger dangers in doing up front architect astronauting and make decisions before you've internalized all the problems. For complex project it's of course appropriate to gather requirements, limitations etc and make a rough design, but going into too much detail is setting the cart before the horse... IMHO of course.

Spearchucker 12y ago
One of the coolest things I've learnt after over 20 years in this industry is to seek first to understand, and then to be understood. We're talking about the same thing.