GoKawiil3 Feb 2025 26 mins programming
software
agile
You can have your cake and eat it, as long as you bake it carefully.
‘We can do this the quick way and pay later, or the thorough way and pay now.’ This seems to be a fundamental dichotomy in software development, between ‘perfectionism’ and ‘pragmatism’, but I do not think it has to be a trade-off at all.
A CTO friend uses the metaphor of clearing two paths up a mountain. The left-hand path is quick and dirty, cleared with a machete and brute force—you do not expect anyone to follow you, you just hack your way through—but you make progress quickly. The right-hand path is a wider, clearer, paved path, and more substantial, but takes time to build as you go along. The left path is useful for scouting ahead to see what is coming up along the trail. The right path is where you will lead everyone, knowing that the trail is safe.
My friend lives in a constant tension between folks who take the left path—which also happens to be the fastest way to make money (he works in a trading firm so this argument carries a lot of weight!)—and the right-path folks who want to build a resilient, sustainable product.
This describes many organizations I have worked with. The tensions on either side are based on the idea that the ‘other way’ is doing it wrong. The right-path advocates are worried that the left-pathers are racking up technical debt that is going to come back and bite them, under the guise of ‘pragmatism’. The left-path folks think the right-pathers are ‘perfectionists’, over-engineering and gold-plating things (and there are often plenty of business managers lining up to agree with them).
I propose that there is a middle path both sides are missing. I call this path the Best Simple System for Now, or BSSN. It has taken me a long time to formulate this idea, which has been ‘hiding in plain sight’ for many years. There are several source ideas that either imply this or at least hint at it, which I hope to acknowledge here, but I have never seen it stated explicitly. So here it is.
Characteristics of the Best Simple System for Now #
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