51–60 of 79 posts
Related concepts:
Egg of Columbus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus
Hindsight Bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias
> It wasn’t just that we’d managed to get a triangle onto the screen. That could be done in about a day. It was the journey the triangle had taken to get up on the screen. If anyone wants to experience something like that today, just follow an introductory tutorial on Vulkan programming. Vulkan is a programming model that gives so much low-level control directly to programmers. As a result, this "Hello Triangle" exam…
If you RTA, that’s a perfect example of drawing a black triangle versus “A Black Triangle Moment”. That tutorial is a general overview of all the possible boilerplate you would expect to see in a template project, and just happens to end in a triangle being drawn on the screen. You could skip a lot of those steps. Is that 5 page section on constructing validation layers and fine tuning the debugger really necessary i…
Drawing a triangle is not the end goal. That's nonsense.
It's good to have a name for this. I feel like my entire career has been "black triangle" problems, and it's been a struggle to get recognized for that effort at times.
The trick I've discovered is that maximizing self-interest eg: maximizing your recognization of efforts (and for everyone else working on the project) is the best way to deliver long-term actual customer value.
So you put out some hype in the org first, build your black triangles internally, and then when you connect customer value, then connect the hype with results.
One thing that’s interesting today is how in the corporate world, even in big tech companies where one might naively think black triangles with explanations might be appreciated by more technically literate managers, working on these sorts of building blocks for big wins will often actually result in projects and teams getting axed. I’ve seen serious attempts at innovation get thrown out the window a number of times…
...Maybe they shouldn't be making their way into managing engineering then?
To be fair, the lady in question, Jen, did come around in the next paragraph. However, it still highlights the extremely annoying problem of doing non-visual work under visual(-only) people -- one then has to actively create visuals.
This quote from Feynman expresses a similar idea: https://fs.blog/richard-feynman-on-beauty/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you RTA, that’s a perfect example of drawing a black triangle versus “A Black Triangle Moment”. That tutorial is a general overview of all the possible boilerplate you would expect to see in a template project, and just happens to end in a triangle being drawn on the screen. You could skip a lot of those steps. Is that 5 page section on constructing validation layers and fine tuning the debugger really necessary i…
That tutorial sets up a complete rendering system, and demonstrates that it works by drawing a triangle... the exact thing described in the black triangle story. Drawing a triangle is not the end goal. That's nonsense.
These days he works for a VR company, but his main creative activity has been writing sci-fi/fantasy/horror novels for some years now, and he has his own series.
PS. I was going to say this article was from way further back than 2014, but on reading the post it appears it was his own repost.
I had the pleasure of working with Jay doing the character illustrations on his indie space shooter, a couple of years before I started coding professionally. This was the article that always stayed with me, especially at times when progress was difficult (which became especially poignant 18 months ago with my ADHD diagnosis). These days he works for a VR company, but his main creative activity has been writing sci-f…
One thing that’s interesting today is how in the corporate world, even in big tech companies where one might naively think black triangles with explanations might be appreciated by more technically literate managers, working on these sorts of building blocks for big wins will often actually result in projects and teams getting axed. I’ve seen serious attempts at innovation get thrown out the window a number of times…
I once worked for months on a modern front-end for an incredibly old legacy system. This was so technically challenging that we weren’t sure if it could be done at all, so a functioning demo was a huge achievement.
What the customer saw was that it was ugly: black and white, plain text, no CSS, no styling of any kind.
They completely ignored the technical milestone and spent an hour asking if we could rearrange the buttons and change the colours. Bike shedding, in other words.
Since then I would much rather show something that’s very pretty but completely broken.
One thing that’s interesting today is how in the corporate world, even in big tech companies where one might naively think black triangles with explanations might be appreciated by more technically literate managers, working on these sorts of building blocks for big wins will often actually result in projects and teams getting axed. I’ve seen serious attempts at innovation get thrown out the window a number of times…
working on these sorts of building blocks for big wins will often actually result in projects and teams getting axed. Had this experience at a previous position. My predecessor had implemented a solution that was extremely hairy, and took many hours to run in production. My manager (a software engineer himself, still involved in day-to-day engineering on this product) said that it couldn't be meaningfully bettered. B…
There’s the problem!
I’ve had this experience many times — people will internalise their limitations and assume that their best is the best possible. Etc..
When a junior employee just casually proves them wrong, calling the emperor naked, that makes them feel inadequate and even ashamed.
I’ve been involved in many similar scenarios. Often there is a history of meetings, consultants, vendor techs, etc… trying to fix the problem and then a grudging acceptance and business workarounds. To suddenly reveal all of that as a lie is to undo established history. It’s like trying to close down the Vatican and tell all the priests to go home because you found a “neat proof” that there is no God. To say that you’ll experience some disbelief and resistance to your ideas is an understatement!
I had one of these moments where I got a nightly report batch job down from 3 hours to about 5 seconds. The customer turned red in the face, screamed at me, accused me of lying and stormed out of the meeting room.
Turns out that guy had to stay back each night to make sure the job ran successfully and so that he could sign the print out officially. He’d accepted the impact on his personal life, after many arguments about his work hours with his wife, etc…
To have all that sacrifice and suffering instantly made superfluous!? Ouch.