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Slowness is a virtue

blog.jakobschwichtenberg.com

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Re: Slowness is a virtue

#41

Post by zwnow »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #22
cogogo wrote: post #10

The classic military maxim… slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

If I wasn't in IT I think I'd love the military, not the stupid political stuff and killing people, but the organization, discipline, routine, focus on predictability, protocols, etc. 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).

I wish software wasnt like the wild west where everyone can do as they please... Well defined proven standards would be so cool to have, but no, we have like 20 different ways to do auth and none of them are secure, regular switches from favoring SSR to client side rendering back to SSR again. Just to name some examples.

Re: Slowness is a virtue

#42

Post by corford »

101008 wrote: post #15
cogogo wrote: post #10

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"

Similar English expression: Less haste, more speed

Re: Slowness is a virtue

#43

Post by majes »

paulcole wrote: post #40
majes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I think the correct analogy here is that if everyone had to shoot from 3/4 court, you would likely end up with a different set of superstars than the set of superstar…

No, I don’t think that is the correct analogy. The analogy in the blog post is that you (one person) gets a month headstart on the test. You would look like a genius because you’d outscore everyone else who had the time constraint. Yes, if you play a different game you’ll find different high performers. That is obvious. But it is not what the blog post is saying. It is saying if you let one person play the same game…

Yeah, I should clarify - I also don't think the article made the correct analogy. But I more meant that I think the different-game-gets-different-winners-analogy should have been how the article tried to make the point the author ultimately intended.

Re: Slowness is a virtue

#44

Post by dominicrose »

cogogo wrote: post #10

The classic military maxim… slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

reminds me of top age of empires II players making tons of clics per minute the game appears so smooth when watching it as a spectator (without seeing the player's mouse and clicks but only the units moving)

Re: Slowness is a virtue

#45

Post by kasperset »

"Development is the execution of a map toward a goal while research is the pursuit of a goal without a map". If there is something I can take from this post, it will be this quote.

Re: Slowness is a virtue

#46

Post by halfcat »

paulcole wrote: post #28
socketcluster wrote: post #17

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 like the simple point about the hypothetical IQ test sent one week in advance. 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 tri…

Counterpoint to consider: In real life, you can just play a different game. Most people will choose to shoot from 3/4 court instead of running all the way to the other end, because they’re not interested in basketball.

Most people aren’t interested enough to work 100+ hours per week. But we wouldn’t say Elon isn’t better at work ”because he doesn’t even work a 40-hour work week”

It has a lot to do with interest. Michael Jordan isn’t a world class mathematician. Elon isn’t a world class father.

Re: Slowness is a virtue

#48

Post by lo_zamoyski »

jasode wrote: post #5

The timing of this article and the submission seems to coincide (and possibly a reaction) to the other story on HN frontpage: Working quickly is more important than it seems (2015) (jsomers.net) To clarify, some are misunderstanding James Somers to be advocating sloppy low quality work, as if he's recommending speed>quality. He's saying something else: remove latencies and delays to shorten feedback loops. Faster fee…

Festina lente.

Re: Slowness is a virtue

#49

Post by chrisweekly »

zwnow wrote: post #41
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I wasn't in IT I think I'd love the military, not the stupid political stuff and killing people, but the organization, discipline, routine, focus on predictability, protocols, etc. 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).

I wish software wasnt like the wild west where everyone can do as they please... Well defined proven standards would be so cool to have, but no, we have like 20 different ways to do auth and none of them are secure, regular switches from favoring SSR to client side rendering back to SSR again. Just to name some examples.

Hmm, I've been doing webdev for a living since 1998, intimately familiar w/ the complete history and modern practices, and I respectful disagree. Pretty sure it's a good thing we're not all forced to do things the same way. And the new SSR with CSR capabilities is not at all the same as the old SSR. You're right that auth is kind of a hot mess though.

Re: Slowness is a virtue

#50

Post by chrisweekly »

aebtebeten wrote: post #19
keiferski wrote: post #4

Good post, but I wish he had delved more into how modern institutions could be revamped to allow for slow, long term thinking. I think there is an assumption that institutions inherently are short term optimized, but I don’t know if that’s actually true, or merely a more recent phenomenon. My guess is that you’d need to deliberately be “less than hyper rational” when doling out funding, because otherwise you end up f…

See Dijkstra's discussion of the "Buxton Index" in https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD11xx/EWD117... : > The Buxton Index of an entity, i.e. person or organization, is defined as the length of the period, measured in years, over which the entity makes its plans. For the little grocery shop around the corner it is about 1/2, for the true Christian it is infinity, and for most other entities it is in betw…

Thanks for this! A brilliant insight, which I don't think I ever encountered before.
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