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Code Is Never “Perfect”, Code Is Only Ever “Good Enough”

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Re: Code Is Never “Perfect”, Code Is Only Ever “Good Enough”

#6
I have the start of a lightning talk on something similar, called "Why Software Sucks". The idea is that we only make software good enough to get by - we will always choose features over robustness if we possibly can. Every project ends when it either fails, or hits feature-complete. No one sits around polishing the pile of bugs and bad decisions that is a feature-complete app unless they have to - much more fun to start something new!

Re: Code Is Never “Perfect”, Code Is Only Ever “Good Enough”

#7
post #6

I have the start of a lightning talk on something similar, called "Why Software Sucks". The idea is that we only make software good enough to get by - we will always choose features over robustness if we possibly can. Every project ends when it either fails, or hits feature-complete. No one sits around polishing the pile of bugs and bad decisions that is a feature-complete app unless they have to - much more fun to s…

It seems like most consumer apps incur a crazy amount of technical debt while largely paying people in equity, then if they take off raise a bunch of money to pay other people in cash to sort it all out... Pretty good system actually.

Re: Code Is Never “Perfect”, Code Is Only Ever “Good Enough”

#8
...and, problems change even if the solution doesn't. At this point I only aim to build things that will durable and sensible for about four years. After that, some other change seems to come along that invalidates the original code, no matter how pretty it was.

Re: Code Is Never “Perfect”, Code Is Only Ever “Good Enough”

#9

I wonder if this attitude will change once things like coq become more accessible.

I don't know if we will ever have tools that are that safe and as easy to use as the alternatives.

News at 11: winging it is less work than being careful!

(Of course, the situation gets fuzzier when you must account for other factors: work/dollars/lives lost due to bugs in dependencies, the integral of maintenance costs over time, etc.)

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