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Levels of aspiration

37signals.com

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Re: Levels of aspiration

#21

Post by smacktoward »

gfodor wrote: post #19

For mature developers the choices here are not about innate skill but about tradeoffs. This blog post makes the error of projecting what is a multi-dimensional problem onto a single dimension. You can have a pretty abysmal code base with beautiful design on top and amazing UX and be rolling in piles of money, and be perfectly aware that the code sucks but made the decision that beautiful code was not the priority or…

I would go a step further and say that, at least in my experience, the code bases that have yielded amazing UX, piles of money, etc. are almost never beautiful. The code may start out beautiful, but once people start using it they start surfacing naïve assumptions, flawed designs, bugs, etc. And if things are going well business-wise there's rarely time or resources to fix those issues in a beautiful, comprehensive way (since maintaining beauty frequently means massive refactoring or flat-out rewrites).

In other words, beautiful code is code that nobody uses.

Re: Levels of aspiration

#22

Post by smacktoward »

raganwald wrote: post #13
smacktoward wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find I get a lot less out of essays I read if I get sidetracked into making value judgments about the authors Similarly, I find I get a lot less out of essays when it seems that the authors are making value judgments about me.

Again you inject the authors into the discussion. Why don’t we pretend I have this warehouse full of monkeys tapping on typewriters. We walk by one of the monkeys and look at what it has written. Hmm, seems interesting. It could be all wrong, it could be useful. Why can’t we just just examine the words on the paper for what they are and see if they're useful to think about? If you’d rather not, you go your way and I…

You're missing my point. I wasn't saying that the problem was that the document came from DHH or 37Signals. I like 37Signals!

What I was saying was, if you remove the author's identity from the document and just look at the actual words on the paper, you find that the words on the paper have a pretty clear value judgment embedded in them: that "a single consultant serving local businesses in Schaumburg, Illinois" is by definition someone who doesn't care about beautiful code, quality engineering, etc. A beyond-saving rube, in other words.

If a warehouse full of monkeys produced the same argument in the same words, I'd have reacted to it just as strongly. Elitism is a turn-off for me.

Re: Levels of aspiration

#23

Post by raganwald »

nimblegorilla wrote: post #18
raganwald wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again you inject the authors into the discussion. Why don’t we pretend I have this warehouse full of monkeys tapping on typewriters. We walk by one of the monkeys and look at what it has written. Hmm, seems interesting. It could be all wrong, it could be useful. Why can’t we just just examine the words on the paper for what they are and see if they're useful to think about? If you’d rather not, you go your way and I…

I kind of agree with you, but if I was walking by a warehouse of typing monkeys I would by default assume all of their articles are not useful. 37 Signals seems like a successful company to me. That is why I think the articles they write might have useful content.

Great point, I agree that the provenance of an article is useful for telling us whether we should consider reading it. Is it upvoted on HN? Was it written by some bozo named raganwald or by someone who has actually accomplished something significant? Did a trusted buddy tweet it?

All I’m saying is that once I decide to read it, I try to let go of that and take the article on its own merits. It could be that an idiot has written something interesting. Or the reverse, a well-repsected person is just plain wrong today.

(And in reality, I’m just as prone as the next guy to think about the author. This business of being detached and zen-like is me aspiring to read essays at a high level on the hierarchy!)

Re: Levels of aspiration

#24

Post by davidw »

Someone once wrote, in their bestselling business book:

"Good enough is fine A lot of people get off on solving problems with complicated solutions. Flexing your intellectual muscles can be intoxicating. Then you start looking for another big challenge that gives you that same rush, regardless of whether it's a good idea or not."

This is somewhat different than what's written in this article:

"Arguments like “but it works” or “it gets the job done” are tell-tale signs of someone happy at the lowest level of the technical hierarchy and your cue to just quietly back out of the debate."

And here's the deal: they're both right, but you need to recognize when each situation is right. The terminology for this is called "maximizers vs satisficers". I wrote something about that and programming here:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2006/02/18/maximizers-satisficers...

And the book that is widely cited is this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More...

But getting back to the discussion: there are times when you really should be looking for the best whatever it is you're looking for. But if you try and do that all the time, you'll spend all your time looking (or worse, deciding everything sucks and you can do it better yourself) and not enough time doing what it was you set out to do.

Which, in the end, simply means that you have got to do the thinking and make your own difficult decisions, rather than listen to trite advice from business books or blogs, or hacker news comments, no matter how insightful they may sound!

Re: Levels of aspiration

#25

Post by msie »

Udo wrote: post #4

To help someone move up the hierarchies, they have to have an intrisic (sic) desire to do so. Arguments like “but it works” or “it gets the job done” are tell-tell signs of someone happy at the lowest level of the technical hierarchy and your cue to just quietly back out of the debate. For an article that claims we need software "in all shapes and sizes" the amount of smug superiority exhibited here is amazing. Yes,…

Yeah, this article is distracting to me. I'm trying to get things done, but I feel guilty that I'm not "doing it right".

Re: Levels of aspiration

#26

Post by enraged_camel »

raganwald wrote: post #23
nimblegorilla wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of agree with you, but if I was walking by a warehouse of typing monkeys I would by default assume all of their articles are not useful. 37 Signals seems like a successful company to me. That is why I think the articles they write might have useful content.

Great point, I agree that the provenance of an article is useful for telling us whether we should consider reading it. Is it upvoted on HN? Was it written by some bozo named raganwald or by someone who has actually accomplished something significant? Did a trusted buddy tweet it? All I’m saying is that once I decide to read it, I try to let go of that and take the article on its own merits. It could be that an idiot…

I agree with you. While the tone of the message matters in terms of how effectively it is conveyed (and how receptive readers will be to the ideas presented), it's not something to get too focused on.

I find that people are much more likely to perceive value judgments and look for hidden meanings in things when they are feeling insecure. Did that guy just insult me? Is he trying to imply that I don't move the industry forward? How dare he?!

Re: Levels of aspiration

#27

Post by enraged_camel »

frankc wrote: post #14
Udo wrote: post #4

To help someone move up the hierarchies, they have to have an intrisic (sic) desire to do so. Arguments like “but it works” or “it gets the job done” are tell-tell signs of someone happy at the lowest level of the technical hierarchy and your cue to just quietly back out of the debate. For an article that claims we need software "in all shapes and sizes" the amount of smug superiority exhibited here is amazing. Yes,…

The irony of the whole thing is that it is usually the pragmatists and not the idealists who wind up "moving industry forward", because by definition, the pragmatists get things done. The world needs C not lisp.

"The world needs C not Lisp" is like saying "the world needs English not French."

Re: Levels of aspiration

#28

Post by timwiseman »

raganwald wrote: post #13
smacktoward wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find I get a lot less out of essays I read if I get sidetracked into making value judgments about the authors Similarly, I find I get a lot less out of essays when it seems that the authors are making value judgments about me.

Again you inject the authors into the discussion. Why don’t we pretend I have this warehouse full of monkeys tapping on typewriters. We walk by one of the monkeys and look at what it has written. Hmm, seems interesting. It could be all wrong, it could be useful. Why can’t we just just examine the words on the paper for what they are and see if they're useful to think about? If you’d rather not, you go your way and I…

In an ideal world, this is precisely what we would do.

Unfortunately, this is a world constrained by time and by knowledge. I do not have the time or expertise to evaluate everything I read in a clinical fashion.

Given those constraints, who the author is becomes a very powerful signal. If Neil De Grasse Tyson says something about astrophysics I can probably take it at face value, at least until I have a reason to question. On the other hand, someone with a self-interested reason to get me to believe something will rightly get far more scrutiny, even if they are eventually proven completely right.

Re: Levels of aspiration

#29

Post by tom_b »

raganwald wrote: post #17
frankc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony of the whole thing is that it is usually the pragmatists and not the idealists who wind up "moving industry forward", because by definition, the pragmatists get things done. The world needs C not lisp.

I have great sympathy for your point that pragmatism has tremendous value. I disagree in a trifling way with statements like “The world needs C not Lisp,” it is obvious to me that the world needs both C and Lisp. Or it did, and both have contributed in various ways to progress, and C continues to be a useful tool. The interesting thing is that insanely great progress requires operating at all levels of the hierarchy.…

"the highest form of artistry is the application of pragmatism to manifesting our dreams"

Have been sitting on that sentence just waiting to use it or are you feeling particularly poetic today?

Thanks either way. Very nicely phrased.

Re: Levels of aspiration

#30

Post by timwiseman »

Udo wrote: post #4

To help someone move up the hierarchies, they have to have an intrisic (sic) desire to do so. Arguments like “but it works” or “it gets the job done” are tell-tell signs of someone happy at the lowest level of the technical hierarchy and your cue to just quietly back out of the debate. For an article that claims we need software "in all shapes and sizes" the amount of smug superiority exhibited here is amazing. Yes,…

I think you may be reading this article far more harshly than I was. For one, I do not think the person sitting at "sorta works" is necessarily a 'clueless hillbilly'.

In fact, I suspect most serious developers travel up and down this pyramid all the time. Sometimes they are trying to push the state of the art forward, sometimes something that "sorta works" and ships ontime is just fine.

As for "beautiful code" being fault tolerant, it could be argued that any code which is not fault tolerant is not beautiful. I am not sure if that is right or now, but beauty tends to be somewhat subjective and that seems a valid interpretation.

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