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Move Slow and Make Things

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Re: Move Slow and Make Things

#91

Post by ryandrake »

nicbou wrote: post #25
solarmist wrote: post #3

I’m sad this is an April fools joke because a lot of the sentiment rings true and I love the slogan “move slow and make things.” Artisans make beautiful things and software artisans make beautiful software, but it’s hard to do it and still be a viable business. And artisans moving slowly isn’t arbitrary. They move slow on the things that matter. The things that shine when attention was paid to the details.

One of my favourite articles on the internet is "an app can be a home-cooked meal". It's something you can make for your own enjoyment, with no plans for scaling on monetisation. I have started making this sort of software, and I thoroughly enjoy it. I target the platform I use, I solve the problems I have, and my only metric is pleasure. I wish we all had more of such projects.

One of the reasons I left software development as a career was I couldn't bear to keep shitting out products that were just barely good enough that the customer wouldn't return it. That's the quality bar in commercial software and I hated having my name on it. I'm more into refactoring it 20 times in order to get the perfect architecture, fix every last bug, find every performance improvement, make it not just work but make the code itself beautiful. Like the Steve Jobs quote:

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

Obviously, this is totally incompatible with how most software is made in the industry, so I just do it as a hobby instead.

Re: Move Slow and Make Things

#92

Post by DoreenMichele »

jiofih wrote: post #12
solarmist wrote: post #3

I’m sad this is an April fools joke because a lot of the sentiment rings true and I love the slogan “move slow and make things.” Artisans make beautiful things and software artisans make beautiful software, but it’s hard to do it and still be a viable business. And artisans moving slowly isn’t arbitrary. They move slow on the things that matter. The things that shine when attention was paid to the details.

Same feeling here - instead of laughing I was disappointed when the second paragraph laid out the April fools joke. I would love to see “small batch data science” where people actually understand the results. Black box recommendations never feel really right.

I have been working on a spread sheet on and off for a few weeks. The data exists, but you can't google the answer(s) I want, so I have been painstakingly putting it together, a few minutes here and a few minutes there.

I've been calling it my "curiosity killed the cat" spreadsheet. Small batch data science sounds so much more respectable while meaning basically the same thing, I think.

Re: Move Slow and Make Things

#93

Post by LaundroMat »

nicbou wrote: post #25
solarmist wrote: post #3

I’m sad this is an April fools joke because a lot of the sentiment rings true and I love the slogan “move slow and make things.” Artisans make beautiful things and software artisans make beautiful software, but it’s hard to do it and still be a viable business. And artisans moving slowly isn’t arbitrary. They move slow on the things that matter. The things that shine when attention was paid to the details.

One of my favourite articles on the internet is "an app can be a home-cooked meal". It's something you can make for your own enjoyment, with no plans for scaling on monetisation. I have started making this sort of software, and I thoroughly enjoy it. I target the platform I use, I solve the problems I have, and my only metric is pleasure. I wish we all had more of such projects.

Same here. The only thing I still crave is user feedback and I have a hard time attracting users without what I feel is sleazy marketing.

Re: Move Slow and Make Things

#94

Post by PartiallyTyped »

ryandrake wrote: post #91
nicbou wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my favourite articles on the internet is "an app can be a home-cooked meal". It's something you can make for your own enjoyment, with no plans for scaling on monetisation. I have started making this sort of software, and I thoroughly enjoy it. I target the platform I use, I solve the problems I have, and my only metric is pleasure. I wish we all had more of such projects.

One of the reasons I left software development as a career was I couldn't bear to keep shitting out products that were just barely good enough that the customer wouldn't return it. That's the quality bar in commercial software and I hated having my name on it. I'm more into refactoring it 20 times in order to get the perfect architecture, fix every last bug, find every performance improvement, make it not just work b…

You will like this presentation by Jonathan Blow [1], I feel the same. I am in grad school, but since my bachelor, I felt more like a craftsman than a student, I always spend more time in order to make my code 'look' beautiful to me, and be performant. I would like to work somewhere that puts emphasis on writing good software instead of chasing feature after feature. Speaking of which, speed is an oft ignored feature [2]. It is really frustrating to have sluggish apps and I often end up avoiding them altogether.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko

[2] https://www.enchant.com/speed-is-a-feature

Re: Move Slow and Make Things

#95

Post by lanstin »

pdimitar wrote: post #60
swiley wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shared state is fundamentally hard. I don't think you can make it bullet-proof at the hardware level without sacrificing performance.

Exactly because it's fundamentally hard, it must be avoided -- we the humans simply can't be trusted with it (speaking as a former C/C++ dev here). It should also be hardware-assisted (if it's impossible to stop it at the hardware level). Stuff like atomic counters were a good first step but the state of the art there hasn't moved in a long time (we don't have atomic 512-bit update operations, do we? if we did, a lot…

Switch to go and channels. You won’t have to worry about locking any more, the design of your program becomes a data flow design issue. (Speaking as a former C programmer). Hardware takes so long to change but more atomicity would be great, but 8n the meantime go runtime is fast, generally lock less to the per request application code flow, and you use all the cores evenly.

Re: Move Slow and Make Things

#96

Post by romanows »

fxtentacle wrote: post #21

I know this is supposed to be a joke, but I feel like it's too close to reality to be funny. I recently ordered a custom tailored set of shirt, trousers, and belt. Their site was bragging about their great AI technology, but sadly I didn't notice that red flag early enough. The results were nothing short of disastrous. I sent in my measurements and they sent me a trouser with wrong measurements and a postcard that sa…

They're clearly taking a reinforcement learning approach. Just a few thousand more returns and you'll be good to go!

Re: Move Slow and Make Things

#97

Post by XCSme »

solarmist wrote: post #3

I’m sad this is an April fools joke because a lot of the sentiment rings true and I love the slogan “move slow and make things.” Artisans make beautiful things and software artisans make beautiful software, but it’s hard to do it and still be a viable business. And artisans moving slowly isn’t arbitrary. They move slow on the things that matter. The things that shine when attention was paid to the details.

> it’s hard to do it and still be a viable business

It's not that hard actually, but you must limit growth. You can easily be profitable and make an amazing product if your goal is not $1B in revenue, but just to be profitable at a small scale, which allows you to run things at your own pace.

Re: Move Slow and Make Things

#98

Post by lostcolony »

lupire wrote: post #81
marcosdumay wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem is there to apply regression at? You get the measures, and make the cloths fit to those measures. If there is any measure missing, you can't just go and guess it, because you are not fitting a population. Talk about distraction...

People probably have a measurable bias in self-measurement, on average.

Sure, but just like people's measures tend toward a distribution, an "on average" bias is still going to be distributed. Trying to throw statistics at it is still going to lead to off the rack style sizing, and NOT individually tailored clothes.

Re: Move Slow and Make Things

#99

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

It's interesting because moving "fast" is very relative to the circumstances you're currently in. If you have an army of engineers, it's very easy to move fast (sometimes, depending on the organization) but moving fast for an individual is objectively slow in comparison.

Re: Move Slow and Make Things

#100

Post by jmull »

This is the best April fools joke I've seen this year.

The article itself is excellent. But the best part is the title is a so much better real credo than the "real" one it parodies.

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