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The classic military maxim… slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
I know it in Spanish (probably it exists in other languages too?) "Visteme despacio que estoy apurado" "Dress me slowly that I am in a hurry"
Walk slowly and you'll walk safe and far.
The classic military maxim… slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Yeah it's boring if it all works but boring is good. And we've been trying to apply this to software development for ages as well - think "continuous deployment" practices (or its new name, DORA metrics in the 2020's).
Great article. I like the simple point about the hypothetical IQ test sent one week in advance. It makes a strong case about time being the true bottleness. I think this same idea could be applied to most tests. Implicit in the design of most tests is the idea that a person's ability to quickly solve moderately difficult problems implies a proportional ability to solve very difficult problems if given more time. This…
I enjoyed this. At my own workplace it's a challenge to fit my team's work into the wider sprint-based methodology where every project must be refined, estimated, and broken down into items with * Come up with 5 possible approaches (2 days) * Create benchmark framework & suite (1 day) * Try out approach A, but realise that it cannot work for subtle technical reasons (2 days) * Try out approach B (2 days) * Fail to ma…
Great article. I like the simple point about the hypothetical IQ test sent one week in advance. It makes a strong case about time being the true bottleness. I think this same idea could be applied to most tests. Implicit in the design of most tests is the idea that a person's ability to quickly solve moderately difficult problems implies a proportional ability to solve very difficult problems if given more time. This…
It’s a simple point but an incorrect one.
If you can work on it for a week, it’s no longer an IQ test. Nobody is saying that the questions on an IQ test are impossible. It’s the fact that there are constraints (time) and that everybody takes the test the same way that makes it an IQ test. Otherwise it’s just a little sheet of kinda tricky puzzles.
Would you be a better basketball player if everyone else had to heave from 3/4 court but you could shoot layups? No, you’d be playing by different rules in an essentially different game. You might have more impressive stats but you wouldn’t be better.
At the time, I read that everybody is better at "slow" chess. But does that explanation make sense? If everybody is better, shouldn't my ELO score have stayed the same?
Great article. I like the simple point about the hypothetical IQ test sent one week in advance. It makes a strong case about time being the true bottleness. I think this same idea could be applied to most tests. Implicit in the design of most tests is the idea that a person's ability to quickly solve moderately difficult problems implies a proportional ability to solve very difficult problems if given more time. This…
Do most people agree with that? I agree with that completely, and I have spent a lot of time wishing that most people agreed with that. But my experience is that almost no one agrees with that...ever...in any circumstance.
I don't even think society as a whole agrees with this statement. If you just rank careers according to the ones that have the highest likelihood of making the most money, the most economically valuable tend to be the ones solving medium difficulty problems quickly.