alt Hacker NewsWhen it comes to programming I find speed is of dubious value.
It comes when you already know what you’re doing. Which, if you’re an engineer, you should know what you’re doing according to Hamming.
But then you may not be tackling innovative or interesting problems. Much of software development is research: understanding customers, patterns, systems and so on. You do not know what you are doing, it’s more akin to science.
Then in order to go fast you must sacrifice something. Most people lose the ability to spot details or consider edge cases. They make fast and loose assumptions. And these trade offs blow up much later when the system experiences pressure.
It’s good to iterate and throw out bad ideas quickly for sure. You just have to know what area you’re in. Are you at the stage where you’re an engineer or are you doing more science related work?
You're not always doing something groundbreaking. Sometimes you're just building a thing that needs to exist. People who build houses don't obsess over this shit, they just build a house and then someone moves into it.
I wage a constant battle of motivating myself because my neurology craves novel sources of dopamine but my job is doing the needful 90% of the time.