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Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

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Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#121

Post by plufz »

gofreddygo wrote: post #108
plufz wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one bought Apple products for Apple's marketing or advertising. That statement would require quite a source. Of course a lot of people bought Apple products because of the ads, like for any company that is a serious advertiser.

Apple had been doing great ads since 1977 [1] Apple revenue not so great till 2000s [2] What changed ? [1]: https://www.macworld.com/article/670956/the-14-best-apple-ad... [2]: https://www.statista.com/chart/4574/apples-revenue-since-197...

You usually need multiple things combined for a successful business. A good product, a good brand, good ads, pr, etc.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#122

Post by makeitdouble »

taneq wrote: post #101
makeitdouble wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's in the link on the relevant bit [0]. TLDR: his dad built stuff, including as a hobby, and he liked overengineering. He liked he dad very much and also got on board with overengineering. [0] http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-obsession-...

I’ve always found the term “overengineering” as used to mean “unnecessarily overspecc’d” a little odd. Engineering is all about appropriately selecting and sizing components. Overspeccing something is underengineering it, and usually happens because you don’t have time to accurately size things so you throw the kitchen sink at it.

Good point, overspeccing was the appropriate wording.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#123

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

pilgrim0 wrote: post #92

Articles in this spirit pisses me off so much, and they’re increasingly becoming trendy. I hate it because they promote the wrong ideas. Downscaling and re-scoping a project is NOT the same as corner cutting. You can almost always come up with an execution strategy for doing a good job while utilizing the available resources to perfectly fulfill the agreed upon requirements. The notion of what’s perfect is always rel…

Perfectionism in a beginner can often mean focusing on the wrong thing, spinning wheels and going down rabbit holes, leading to burnout.

Perfectionism to an expert often means the opposite. The difference is the expert knows what is worth time and effort.

Somewhere in the learning process, a beginner must intermediate, and then become an expert.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#124

Post by vineyardmike »

justin_oaks wrote: post #113
YZF wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the right answer for a real business. Sometimes we'll fix that later is perfectly acceptable. If that was good enough for Facebook it can certainly be good enough for others.

"We'll fix that later" is at best a hopeful fantasy, and at worst a lie intended to manipulate. It doesn't happen. We need to be clear here. If what needs to be fixed is something that will inevitably cause serious problems down the road, then it should be fixed immediately. If it may cause minor problems then maybe you should never fix it. And there's a lot in between. The biggest problem is that bosses aren't in a…

> We need to be clear here. If what needs to be fixed is something that will inevitably cause serious problems down the road, then it should be fixed immediately. If it may cause minor problems then maybe you should never fix it. And there's a lot in between.

I feel like a lot of conversations around technical debt miss this nuance.

There are plenty of systems I’ve worked on that have been either (1) running for years without issue or (2) deprecated and deleted without ever addressing most of the “debt” issues/tickets that my team and I created in our tracking systems.

I think a lot of engineers take pride in their craft (which is good). Until you learn that a cabinet with a rough back is still a great cabinet, you’re doomed to feel uneasy about leaving something “unfinished”. So many people feel they left some “hack” in the code they want to fix. Which is different than a bug. There are endless improvements possible. YAGNI.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#125

Post by v7n »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #69

There's a reason everyone knows who Steve Jobs is and no one knows or cares who the vast majority of these corner-cutting "professionals" are

Everyone knows that one aspiring Austrian painter and do not know most other heads of states. I'd say not falling into disrepute is a clear secondary goal for many corner cutters.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#126

Post by rob74 »

gofreddygo wrote: post #108
plufz wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one bought Apple products for Apple's marketing or advertising. That statement would require quite a source. Of course a lot of people bought Apple products because of the ads, like for any company that is a serious advertiser.

Apple had been doing great ads since 1977 [1] Apple revenue not so great till 2000s [2] What changed ? [1]: https://www.macworld.com/article/670956/the-14-best-apple-ad... [2]: https://www.statista.com/chart/4574/apples-revenue-since-197...

I think the revenue chart is a bit misleading. Apple was very successful with the Apple II and the early Macintosh models (otherwise they would have gone the way of Commodore and Atari), it's just that the market was much smaller in the 1980s - also, I doubt that the graph is inflation adjusted.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#127

Post by moffkalast »

nebula8804 wrote: post #74
matusp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not about the backs of cabinets. It is about telling your customers how big of a deal the backs of cabinets really are.

The back of Apple cabinets are are actually pretty good even in the Tim Cook era. [1]: https://www.cultofmac.com/320883/why-samsungs-design-sucks-i... [2]: https://ioshacker.com/iphone/image-compares-ugly-samsung-bea...

Tbh from a repair perspective I think I'd prefer Samsung's design where it's obvious what each component is and exposed solder joints that might let you desolder something if needed, compared to Apple's nicer looking bunch of black boxes where you're lucky if there's a label on something to tell you what it hell it even is.

Also TIL Iphones have two separate batteries? Quite unusual.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#128

Post by moffkalast »

manmal wrote: post #80
skydhash wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More often than not, you have n > 1 implementation solutions possibles. The article said to factor the constraints into the choice of solutions, not the solution itself. Like if it would take 6 months to implement a backend, but just 1 month with Firebase, and time is a more important than data ownership, you go with Firebase. Then you prepare a plan if you ever need to migrate off Firebase. If you don't have time to…

Absolutely agree. Relevant here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle

Now just add another one and you have the conjoined triangles of success.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#129

Post by afro88 »

skydhash wrote: post #106
afro88 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do need to understand the pros and cons, and wow there are some incredible time and complexity costs to maintaining all dependencies yourself, or trying to firewall all dependencies through interfaces. I wasn't talking about blindly doing stuff without understanding consequences and risk managing. I was rebutting the point from the article that you shouldn't ever have tech debt. You will, no matter what choices y…

> I was rebutting the point from the article that you shouldn't ever have tech debt. You will, no matter what choices you make today. I agree > wow there are some incredible time and complexity costs to maintaining all dependencies yourself, or trying to firewall all dependencies through interfaces. I'm not saying you should firewall everything. But if it make sense, you do so. You also need someones that understand…

Ah I see now, you took issue with the example specifically, rather than the point. You're right, I see how it's a bad example, and what you've laid out is a very good way of handling dependencies.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#130

Post by sgerenser »

moffkalast wrote: post #127
nebula8804 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The back of Apple cabinets are are actually pretty good even in the Tim Cook era. [1]: https://www.cultofmac.com/320883/why-samsungs-design-sucks-i... [2]: https://ioshacker.com/iphone/image-compares-ugly-samsung-bea...

Tbh from a repair perspective I think I'd prefer Samsung's design where it's obvious what each component is and exposed solder joints that might let you desolder something if needed, compared to Apple's nicer looking bunch of black boxes where you're lucky if there's a label on something to tell you what it hell it even is. Also TIL Iphones have two separate batteries? Quite unusual.

That was the iPhone X from 6 or so years ago. I don’t think newer iPhones have 2 separate batteries.
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