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It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

nytimes.com

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Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#111

Post by james_s_tayler »

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #74
paddlepop wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't work so well for video games. Reviews come out saying its thin on content with a score to match and can kill a game before its had a chance to expand. Developers have started trying to do this more often lately with mixed results, DICE and Blizzard are high profile examples of this. Blizzards latest World of Warcraft expansion was heavily criticized for the lack of content on release day and has yet to s…

Not just videogames, it's also a terrible strategy for something like self-driving cars or medicine, where "Move fast & break things" ends up breaking people.

The problem is people want a simple, one-size-fits-all mental model of what an MVP is.

Different industries, different problems, different solutions = different definitions of what an MVP will and can be.

Most of this entire discussion is useless.

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#112

Post by xenospn »

CM30 wrote: post #54

Well, they've got a point. There are definitely quite a few projects whose creators needed to step back, stop spending years focusing on the wrong things and actually get something done. I mean, look at Duke Nukem Forever. Might have done pretty well had they not spent 14 years on it. Same with many other games and pieces of art that spent decades in development, and sometimes bankrupted/broke their creators in the p…

coughs Chinese Democracy cough

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#113

Post by georgeecollins »

nostrademons wrote: post #91
paddlepop wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't work so well for video games. Reviews come out saying its thin on content with a score to match and can kill a game before its had a chance to expand. Developers have started trying to do this more often lately with mixed results, DICE and Blizzard are high profile examples of this. Blizzards latest World of Warcraft expansion was heavily criticized for the lack of content on release day and has yet to s…

It doesn't work for AAA games, but it can work really well for indie games. Think of something like Factorio, where version 0.1 looked like this: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-184 Then they just kept releasing every week for 7 years, and now you have people building CPUs and explaining Apache Kafka with it. Ostriv is another recent game that comes to mind as having a similar development cycle. Also many F2P…

Lots of games come out in early beta now and raise money through sales as they are developed. It is a better model than crowdfunding for games, because you start from a demonstration of competence in game development and you (usually) have direct view into the development process.

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#114

Post by Millennium »

I really wish I could stop seeing this everywhere I went. I get that there are people who need this kind of advice, but for someone like me, this advice is poison. For everyone who needs to be carefully and constantly reminded that you can't let the perfect become the enemy of the good, there's someone else, maybe several someones, who need to be carefully and constantly reminded that "good enough" is almost never good enough. And this latter group, when left unchecked, tends to do a lot more harm than the former.

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#115

Post by lixtra »

mathieuh wrote: post #39
koolba wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced that the majority of the value from pair programming (literally sitting next to each other, not "virtual" pair programming) comes from the fear of looking like a lazy idiot in front of the other programmer.

Hah same here. Half the time I ask someone to pair with me it’s because I simply cannot muster the motivation to do anything for whatever reason. I find I go through a couple of weeks of this a couple of times a year, I guess you’d call it mild burnout.

If you assume mild burnout, do you think it’s long term the right strategy to force yourself through it? What would your body have to do to tell you that it’s not mild anymore? What if it does? Take care!

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#116

Post by rtpg »

Millennium wrote: post #114

I really wish I could stop seeing this everywhere I went. I get that there are people who need this kind of advice, but for someone like me, this advice is poison. For everyone who needs to be carefully and constantly reminded that you can't let the perfect become the enemy of the good, there's someone else, maybe several someones, who need to be carefully and constantly reminded that "good enough" is almost never go…

This is definitely in the category of advice (much like GTD) of "if you don't think you need this advice, you probably don't need it."

I feel like there's an alternate wording for this advice that is less "cut corners" and more "determine how many corners you don't want cut".

Maybe involving a target condition? You want to make the best thing possible. Keep on aiming for the best, but establish a baseline that you would find acceptable. Maybe you won't make something perfect, but you'll now have a target that you _can_ get to.

This thought process reframes the discussion of "good enough" away from "did I spend enough time on this? Surely I can spend another week and make it 10% better" to "Does this meet the requirements". There is no longer a debate to be had, just a yes or no question to answer.

So when people ship things that just aren't good enough you don't have a discussion around spending more time on things or being more careful, you have a discussion around what your baseline requirements are (which is _actually_ what you care about).

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#117

Post by lacampbell »

koolba wrote: post #36
Buttons840 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pretend-work I pretend I'm live streaming my programming session, it seems to cause some switch to flip in my brain and seems to help. Maybe I should actually live stream? But I probably wouldn't have real viewers, and don't know how to fit multiple monitors into a stream.

I'm convinced that the majority of the value from pair programming (literally sitting next to each other, not "virtual" pair programming) comes from the fear of looking like a lazy idiot in front of the other programmer.

There's a few people online I talk to working on completely different side projects than me. Maybe I should suggest pair-programming remotely to them.

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#118

Post by aswanson »

Millennium wrote: post #114

I really wish I could stop seeing this everywhere I went. I get that there are people who need this kind of advice, but for someone like me, this advice is poison. For everyone who needs to be carefully and constantly reminded that you can't let the perfect become the enemy of the good, there's someone else, maybe several someones, who need to be carefully and constantly reminded that "good enough" is almost never go…

Hey, nobody said it was perfect advice. :)

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#119

Post by dang »

xenospn wrote: post #112
CM30 wrote: post #54

Well, they've got a point. There are definitely quite a few projects whose creators needed to step back, stop spending years focusing on the wrong things and actually get something done. I mean, look at Duke Nukem Forever. Might have done pretty well had they not spent 14 years on it. Same with many other games and pieces of art that spent decades in development, and sometimes bankrupted/broke their creators in the p…

coughs Chinese Democracy cough

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#120

Post by wademealing »

Buttons840 wrote: post #32
ohazi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often tell myself to "just start" rather than to "just get it done," especially when I suspect my anxiety is driving. If I tell myself I'm just going to sit down and pretend-work on the thing that's making me anxious for five minutes, just to get a feel for it, and if it ends up being crappy, I'll just toss it and start over later, I'm usually able to short-circuit the anxious "everything must be well-understood an…

> pretend-work I pretend I'm live streaming my programming session, it seems to cause some switch to flip in my brain and seems to help. Maybe I should actually live stream? But I probably wouldn't have real viewers, and don't know how to fit multiple monitors into a stream.

You dont, usually.. I keep one for the code and the other for the browser/private stuff.

You can setup a 'scene' in obs to switch to the other window if you need to, but keeping it focused on your editor/work display really helps those private moments slip to the stream less often.

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