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April 12 - April 23, 2021
“The hard thing about building software is deciding what to say, not saying it.”
(Frederic Brooks)
a room filled with professionals whose work depended on precise specification could neither compose nor agree upon a simple, unambiguous definition of their own job titles.
SWAG (take a Silly, Wild-Assed Guess)—
it's a trap. keep your mouth shut.
“I would rather write programs to help me write programs than write programs.”
real-world requirement are so "impure"
saying attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
PRODUCT MANAGER: Too long! Can’t we move faster? DEVELOPMENT MANAGER: This is how long it takes. PRODUCT MANAGER: Can’t we do better? DEVELOPMENT MANAGER: If we’re really good, we can know how long it will take, but we can’t change it.
We all work for organizations. These organizations require plans. Unless you are independently wealthy, you must work to a schedule. If you don’t make your own schedules, somebody else will. Then that person will control your work.
(Watts Humphrey, on Team Software Process)
“Always implement things when you actually need them, never when you just foresee that you need them.”
"YAGNI". Very true. Of best-laid plans of mice and men.
Ten years from now there’s a few grains of sand left, and that’s all you have to work with.
the perspective is less “small is beautiful” than “big is dangerous.”
trapped in infinite loops of self-ignorance.
Knuth set out to write a software tool for writing and publishing beautiful technical books. He expected it to take a year. Instead, it took almost ten.
same with estimating how long The Art of Programming will take
“When people ask me when something will be finished, I respond, ‘It will be ready sooner if you help.’ ”
All things fall and are built again, And those that build them again are gay. —William Butler Yeats, “Lapis Lazuli”
You said it.
