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Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems (2015)

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Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems (2015)

#101

Post by koonsolo »

40 year old here. Speed doesn't matter as much as WHAT you deliver. First of all, people do not know how much time something takes. And secondly, they will forget how much time it took, but not how well it was made.

Responding fast to emails is just crazy. I lost count on how many urgent problems got resolved automatically. "Hey can you help me with this". 15 minutes later "Nevermind, found it".

I'm in the "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast" camp. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4FZfzqMtwQZES3eqN/slow-is-sm...

Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems (2015)

#102

Post by your-nanny »

monsieurbanana wrote: post #8
skybrian wrote: post #7

It seems like this should work the other way too? If you want to break a habit, add a delay. This seems like a good idea for a browser extension. Maybe sometimes you want to undo the work that the website did making things go faster?

That might be a really good idea. Over the years I've tried multiple website blockers, but I keep turning them off (no judgment please...). Artificially slowing down those time waster websites instead might do the trick. Not so slow it becomes unusable (or I'll turn it off) , but slow enough that over time I start associating it with a bad experience.

or tie every login to a donation to the other political party. that should do the trick.

Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems (2015)

#103

Post by rossdavidh »

Interesting post (esp loved the ending), but it missed two key points: 1) if you want less of something (e.g. email), you don't always have to say 'no', if that's a problem somehow you can also just deliver slowly 2) the best way to do things quickly is not to hurry, it's to break it into smaller pieces whenever possible, so that each piece is delivered quickly

Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems (2015)

#105

Post by karmakaze »

A counterintuitive thing I've discovered us that working fast let's you solve more complex problems. At first it seems that you should try to go slow to make sure that all the cases are properly treated. Proceeding this way can result in nearly endless refinements as you go and losing sight of the main goals from time to time and repeatedly forgetting exactly where you are in the grand plan and which direction/step you were headed.

Going fast doesn't allow for secondary concerns and produces a single simple solution. Of course you can now do everything else it needs that you think of but code written this way with a clear core path is so refreshing from bottom-up generation where every detail has equal importance.

I even recall a time where I was performing a cascade of rebases and merges across three git branches and 4 or more submodule branches. Each feature update/sync took so many tries to get right. I eventually got fed up and just brute-powered through it without prethinking it. Because it was a short time from start to finish I was able to clearly see each commit in each tree I was working on without a pause wondering where I was or doing next. It was also less error prone than going slow. It fact I just did the whole process twice in a fraction of the careful time and compared results. No diffs were taken as correct and any diffs were examined and the correct variant used.

Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems (2015)

#106

Post by nestorherre »

lewisjoe wrote: post #25

When I do dev stuff with a slight sense of urgency, the probability of my mind wandering somewhere else goes down drastically. At this mode, my mind uses all available time slots to make the best of them. For example, by the time my program compiles, my brain visualizes possible breakage scenarios and possible solutions, in case the compilation fails. I could be on confirmation bias here, but this seems to be a neat…

Same thing happens to me, but not only on dev stuff. You get into "Flow" state.

Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems (2015)

#107

Post by bluntfang »

tictoc wrote: post #100
bluntfang wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We're talking about hard work that is both interesting and rewarding. Your hard work is way more rewarding to your masters than to you, though.

We're all slaves man.

Yeah I get the sarcasm, but I really don't understand people who accept capitalism and also accept that their hard work is worth more than what they receive in compensation. Like, shouldn't they be upset and trying to find a way to twist the system for their benefit, just like the people using them?

Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems (2015)

#109

Post by stcredzero »

koonsolo wrote: post #101

40 year old here. Speed doesn't matter as much as WHAT you deliver. First of all, people do not know how much time something takes. And secondly, they will forget how much time it took, but not how well it was made. Responding fast to emails is just crazy. I lost count on how many urgent problems got resolved automatically. "Hey can you help me with this". 15 minutes later "Nevermind, found it". I'm in the "Slow is s…

Speed doesn't matter as much as WHAT you deliver.

Seems to me, that the recent spate of online coding interview techniques are basically looking for people who type fast. I suspect that they're finding people who are actually "10X" coders, and people who have memorized the typing out of the solution.

(EDIT: A problem with such 3rd party companies, is that the incentives are subtly misaligned, as they are for any recruiter. If they can present a good image, and a steady stream of candidates who produce videos where they're going claka-claka-claka on the keyboard at a good clip, like a hollywood hacker (which runs and compiles) then they're golden. It doesn't matter to them, if they're missing out on good, thoughtful candidates. False negatives are the order of the day.)

Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems (2015)

#110

Post by api »

koonsolo wrote: post #101

40 year old here. Speed doesn't matter as much as WHAT you deliver. First of all, people do not know how much time something takes. And secondly, they will forget how much time it took, but not how well it was made. Responding fast to emails is just crazy. I lost count on how many urgent problems got resolved automatically. "Hey can you help me with this". 15 minutes later "Nevermind, found it". I'm in the "Slow is s…

Another 40 year old here: I mostly agree and I've also found that thinking deeply about a problem for a long time before trying to build anything pays huge dividends. In particular I spend a long time thinking about how I can simplify the design to save implementation time, which means actually building it is faster. I also think a lot about UX and DX: simplifying installation, interface, maintenance, removing unnecessary knobs, choosing the right algorithms and tooling, etc.

I think waterfall style development works for one person inside one's own mind, but not beyond that.

A lot of the stuff I see from 20 year olds these days is monstrously over-engineered and Rube-goldberg like. Many keystrokes, sure, but less thought. This also yields bloatware that hogs resources and is hard to install and maintain.

http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/The_Evolution_of_a_Programmer....

More thought and less typing young padawan.

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