Not Perfect, Just Better
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Not Perfect, Just Better
1–10 of 40 posts
Re: Not Perfect, Just Better
#2I'm not entirely disagreeing, but this is a disgusting mindset when applied to mathematics, and programming is applied mathematics. I've seen it so often. The incompetent spend so much of their time dredging up excuses for mediocrity, rather than improving.
Re: Not Perfect, Just Better
#3I'm not entirely disagreeing, but this is a disgusting mindset when applied to mathematics, and programming is applied mathematics. I've seen it so often. The incompetent spend so much of their time dredging up excuses for mediocrity, rather than improving.
Mathematics can be applied to programming, for sure. However, much of programming is encoding of business processes. Such that, unless you expand your scope for all business process also being applied mathematics, I'm not sure this is that instructive.
Re: Not Perfect, Just Better
#4I'm not entirely disagreeing, but this is a disgusting mindset when applied to mathematics, and programming is applied mathematics. I've seen it so often. The incompetent spend so much of their time dredging up excuses for mediocrity, rather than improving.
I have a completely opposite view. Striving for perfectness can be very toxic and create an environment where growth is impossible if you don't match someones definition of "perfect". It's not about excuses, it's about compromises, making progress, growing in our own pace and being human.
Re: Not Perfect, Just Better
#5I'm not entirely disagreeing, but this is a disgusting mindset when applied to mathematics, and programming is applied mathematics. I've seen it so often. The incompetent spend so much of their time dredging up excuses for mediocrity, rather than improving.
The trick is defining a subset of a larger problem that you can solve perfectly--and know what isn't solved for next time.
Re: Not Perfect, Just Better
#6Would be just better with capital letters.
Re: Not Perfect, Just Better
#7Would be just better with capital letters.
Or a haiku, there's not much being said there.
Re: Not Perfect, Just Better
#8Something I will add which relates to the examples in the post (gym, business, relationships) is that big things happen with lots of small steps over time. You can't do a years worth of workouts on Jan 1 and be fit for the year. These things take daily effort and cycles of work and recovery to happen.
That desire for perfection can also be a desire to be done. To have it finished and get closure. It's hard to accept that some things are going to take a long time or a lifetime.
Re: Not Perfect, Just Better
#9I'm not entirely disagreeing, but this is a disgusting mindset when applied to mathematics, and programming is applied mathematics. I've seen it so often. The incompetent spend so much of their time dredging up excuses for mediocrity, rather than improving.
I have a completely opposite view. Striving for perfectness can be very toxic and create an environment where growth is impossible if you don't match someones definition of "perfect". It's not about excuses, it's about compromises, making progress, growing in our own pace and being human.
You both make good points.
Striving for perfection is a toxic habit (not just to your team, but to yourself too). However, there's also a category of people that write sloppy/unthoughtful code at the expense of their colleagues. Often times this is just due to inexperience, and we should reach out with advice and mentorship, but also have patience with their pace of improvement.
However, there's also a subset of people who abuse this compassion to get away with being sloppy intentionally (ie lazy). We should be mindful that these people exist, as they also create resentment/contempt, which also creates a toxic work environment.
Re: Not Perfect, Just Better
#10I'm not entirely disagreeing, but this is a disgusting mindset when applied to mathematics, and programming is applied mathematics. I've seen it so often. The incompetent spend so much of their time dredging up excuses for mediocrity, rather than improving.
I'm not sure I'd be comfortable, calling it "disgusting."
It's different from the one I tend to apply, in my own work.
I used to work for a famous Japanese imaging corporation. Their brand was pretty much synonymous with "Quality."
They got that way, by practicing Perfection as a religion. It could be very, very tough, to deal with, but it gave me a great appreciation for a Quality mindset, in my own work.
The result is that even my lash-up, throwaway code, tends to be better than many folks' final release code.
This has great advantages for me. In fact, I just experienced one, a few minutes ago. If the baseline code is of as high Quality as I can possibly make it, then I can avoid lash-ups, or at least, reduce their severity, later. I refactored a fairly complex server interaction timeline, and it was made much easier, because I was pretty damn anal, when I first wrote it, maybe six months ago.