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   clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Tuesday, 12-Nov-2024 08:08:34 JST clacke

   @eigen I struggle a lot with this, and I think "Worse Is Better" is exactly the key.

   I think "Worse Is Better" is equal parts on one side an intrinsically good and important thing and on the other side a disease brought on by capitalism.

   Prioritizing resources, releasing early and often, avoiding overengineering and focusing on value are agile and lean practices, and I believe they are good practices.

   Thinking shortsightedly, suboptimizing and failing to use resources efficiently from a societal perspective are capitalist problems, and can be amplified by agile and lean processes.

   We poop code because it's easy to measure, we release features instead of long-term infrastructure because it's easy to measure, we build new things instead of maintaining old things because it provides visibility, we build towers of leaky and haphazard abstractions because time to market is king.

   • Embed this notice
     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Tuesday, 12-Nov-2024 08:08:32 JST clacke

     in reply to

     @eigen "and rare, high-impact events aren't usually handled well in any context: not just software"

     Yes. This is a collective action problem, and difficult to solve within capitalism.

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Tuesday, 12-Nov-2024 08:08:42 JST clacke

     in reply to

     "I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter."

     -- Blaise Pascal

     Ideally, we would explore software in the glue-and-duct-tape cowboy mode, and later as our domain was better understood we'd go back and rework it with the knowledge we've gained. But nobody has the time; New exploration beckons, and in a competitive environment you need to move forward just to stand still.

     Islands of careful development exist, and you occasionally get lone wolves, or non-profits with resources, who can work on a common problem with particularly bad existing solutions, but they are the exceptions to the rule.