21–30 of 132 posts
Is there always a unique solution? If constraints A is tightened and then determines the outcome, could that not also happen with a tightened constraint B that determines a different outcome?
I'm all for pushing back against "let's not make perfect the enemy of good." I hear that all the time in reference to software that is usually quite bad, and often a little evil to boot--nothing good anywhere in sight except some poor schmuck trying to find a way to make their job something worth taking pride in. I'm not sure I agree that systems are products though. The product mindset is toxic. It means that you've…
"We're not trying to build a perfect solution here" is not something said to assuage over-engineering or encourage sloppy work. It's said to head off a specific complaint from a specific kind engineer who will object that the proposed solution won't work because it doesn't cover some obscure edge case which rarely comes up in production. "We're not trying to build a perfect solution here" is saying "We acknowledge no…
I wouldn't say that "over-engineering means solving the wrong problem". It's possible that the idea is basically correct, but people are directing effort towards optimizing for constraints that don't really exist or can be dealt with once a better picture is in place, whether it's the mythical PMF or just "we now understand what the users want, let's build that". The worst clusterfuck I've ever worked on was a web ap…
> but the team was spending time building an absurd Rube-Goldberg contraption of microservices This is literally the example that I use, the most common case of over-engineering, having more microservices than team members. Microservices are the right solution for certain problems, but those were not problems they had. Some anecdotal evidence. I worked in many of these places, and the most common tell of over-enginee…
Or more microservices than customers
There is not a perfect solution. There are many bad solutions. There are a few solutions that are OK but with different tradeoffs.
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I'm all for pushing back against "let's not make perfect the enemy of good." I hear that all the time in reference to software that is usually quite bad, and often a little evil to boot--nothing good anywhere in sight except some poor schmuck trying to find a way to make their job something worth taking pride in. I'm not sure I agree that systems are products though. The product mindset is toxic. It means that you've…
You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater by retreating to "tools". If you want to stop the enshittification, this is not the way. You're just opening yourself up to new scams. i.e. AI tools, political agendas, etc.
Better products are just better. Demand them.
I'm all for pushing back against "let's not make perfect the enemy of good." I hear that all the time in reference to software that is usually quite bad, and often a little evil to boot--nothing good anywhere in sight except some poor schmuck trying to find a way to make their job something worth taking pride in. I'm not sure I agree that systems are products though. The product mindset is toxic. It means that you've…