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Ship Something Every Day

maxleiter.com

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Re: Ship Something Every Day

#81

Post by flir »

userbinator wrote: post #5

IMHO "every day" is far too frequent, and this ADHD-ish attitude is one of the reasons why the quality of average software has gone down the drain. Developers need to step back, think more deeply, and not worry about being pressured into "shipping code" that barely works. The dopamine rush of your code being shipped This frequent overstimulation leads to less ability for long-term attention. When I taught programming…

I agree with everything you said. But...

Your team (and manager) sees you're working

our industry is not rational.

Re: Ship Something Every Day

#83

Post by [deleted] »

intull wrote: post #48
userbinator wrote: post #5

IMHO "every day" is far too frequent, and this ADHD-ish attitude is one of the reasons why the quality of average software has gone down the drain. Developers need to step back, think more deeply, and not worry about being pressured into "shipping code" that barely works. The dopamine rush of your code being shipped This frequent overstimulation leads to less ability for long-term attention. When I taught programming…

> ... and this ADHD-ish attitude ... How did "ADHD" enter the conversation out of the blue? If you're thinking this is how "ADHD-ish" experience is, I recommend you to check out /r/ADHD_programmers where people actually with ADD struggle to figure out how to ship consistently, let alone every day!

[deleted]

Re: Ship Something Every Day

#84

Post by malux85 »

hollerith wrote: post #37
llmblockchain wrote: post #36

A better expression of this idea is, "No zero days." Do something every day. Maybe it's getting up on time. Maybe it's exercise. Maybe it's a bug fix.

"zero-day" already has a meaning, and that is not it.

Even still, "no zero days" is a desirable state, so the phrase still holds

Re: Ship Something Every Day

#85

Post by kristjank »

I noticed the same rush when consistently journalling and keeping track of my habits. There is something commit-like about checking in on yourself, even if it's not even remotely code-related. I also think it builds a well-maintained framework that you can attach other (especially time management) chores to. (Well, I'm already at my desk for journalling, let's also write down other tasks I need to do today/tomorrow and get started with the first one)

I'm not quite sure whether it's really important to keep your github bathroom wall green, but it builds a quite useful habit imo.

Re: Ship Something Every Day

#86

Post by ZaoLahma »

chipdart wrote: post #57
userbinator wrote: post #5

IMHO "every day" is far too frequent, and this ADHD-ish attitude is one of the reasons why the quality of average software has gone down the drain. Developers need to step back, think more deeply, and not worry about being pressured into "shipping code" that barely works. The dopamine rush of your code being shipped This frequent overstimulation leads to less ability for long-term attention. When I taught programming…

> IMHO "every day" is far too frequent, and this ADHD-ish attitude is one of the reasons why the quality of average software has gone down the drain. I think you are too quick to try to claim someone is incompetent or unsuited for a job just because you can't or won't understand a point they make over how many commits they make. I disagree with you: I think that posting at least one commit per day is an incredible lo…

> I think that posting at least one commit per day is an incredible low goal. A commit can be anything, from a major refactoring to fixing a typo.

This is an easy goal in some companies / projects, while in others (usually bigger companies / projects) it's unreasonable and will even be counter productive.

You might need hours of execution time in a test cluster, then need code reviews from several peers (who are busy working on prioritized items), and if your commit is later integrated with commits from other organizations and tested as a whole which results in failures, you put extra load on those who are tasked with finding and sorting out the offending commits.

In principle I do absolutely agree with you that ideally it should be encouraged to spontaneously fix and commit, but in practice "it depends". I've found that larger companies / projects have a certain cadence, and trying to deviate from that cadence too much just results in grinding gears on all levels.

Re: Ship Something Every Day

#87

Post by dailykoder »

kristjank wrote: post #85

I noticed the same rush when consistently journalling and keeping track of my habits. There is something commit-like about checking in on yourself, even if it's not even remotely code-related. I also think it builds a well-maintained framework that you can attach other (especially time management) chores to. (Well, I'm already at my desk for journalling, let's also write down other tasks I need to do today/tomorrow a…

I think what you are pointing out is really really important.

All of this "get SOME work done every day" is really really good, but (atleast in my experience) you have to separate your feelings from likes or stars on social media. Do it for yourself. Do it because you like to do it. Do it because you can develop your inner strength with it. Sure, github stars and a great commit history might give you a dopamine rush, but so does learning to appreciate the struggle and working through it. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks about it.

Over the past year/months I built a RISC-V CPU in VHDL. It can barely do anything and if I show it to most people they'd probably think it's super boring. But I love it. I love to work on it. I love to let the LEDs blink the way I wanted to, because I achieved to implement some small thing in hardware and see that it works (imagine my dopamine rush the first time it successfully ran gcc-generated code and blinked an LED on actual hardware. That's boring, innit? But I loved it.). It's often a really hard struggle, because the progress is so little, but I learned to force myself to do it, even if I don't want to/don't feel like it, because I know it will bring me joy in the end, even if I hate it for days/weeks. I sitll do it.

Same with journaling, as you said. It's all about the habits. Find your habit and do it.

Re: Ship Something Every Day

#88

Post by richrichie »

userbinator wrote: post #5

IMHO "every day" is far too frequent, and this ADHD-ish attitude is one of the reasons why the quality of average software has gone down the drain. Developers need to step back, think more deeply, and not worry about being pressured into "shipping code" that barely works. The dopamine rush of your code being shipped This frequent overstimulation leads to less ability for long-term attention. When I taught programming…

> I can personally say that the satisfaction is far bigger the longer you've persevered.

Moi aussi. Volume of ejaculate is highly correlated with level of satisfaction.

Re: Ship Something Every Day

#89

Post by mewpmewp2 »

safety1st wrote: post #54
MaxLeiter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left off a key point; your code doesn’t need to ship to production, I just think you should do _something_. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. > I can personally say that the satisfaction is far bigger the longer you've persevered. It’s a great feeling to finish something. I find I’m more likely to finish it well if I break it up versus ship it all at once (and my teammates thank me)

I was about to say; if we replace 'ship' with 'commit' I'm in full agreement. If you're a full time developer I don't know why you wouldn't. Commits are communication. If we're making them often and correctly, there's that much less fluffing around with reports and status updates and meetings that we need to do. The merits of CI/CD notwithstanding I definitely do NOT want my reports feeling like they need to deploy e…

Managers watch commit histories? Haven't ever heard of something like that.

Re: Ship Something Every Day

#90

Post by morgante »

userbinator wrote: post #5

IMHO "every day" is far too frequent, and this ADHD-ish attitude is one of the reasons why the quality of average software has gone down the drain. Developers need to step back, think more deeply, and not worry about being pressured into "shipping code" that barely works. The dopamine rush of your code being shipped This frequent overstimulation leads to less ability for long-term attention. When I taught programming…

You're conflating shipping with release.

Of course, many tasks take more than a day to do well. That doesn't mean you can't break it up into atomic parts and ship each part every day (behind a feature flag).

I personally find the hubris of disappearing into a branch for many days without any feedback incredibly offputting. If you're working on a team, your team should be able to see your daily progress.

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