The Paradox of Perfection: When ‘Good Enough’ is Actually Better

How I stopped worrying and learned to love the easy fix

On the balance between perfect solutions and pragmatic fixes in software engineering

On technological optimism and technological pragmatism

"There are no guarantees that things are going to turn out very well for anyone.”

Bridges & scruples

For your own sanity, you have to remember that not all problems can be solved. Not all problems can be solved, but all problems can be illuminated. —Ursula Franklin

How to create software quality.

I’ve been reading Steven Sinofsky’s Hardcore Software, and particularly enjoyed this quote from a memo discussed in the Zero Defects chapter: You can improve the quality of your code, and if you do, the rewards for yourself and for Microsoft will be immense. The hardest part is to decide that you want to write perfect code. If I wrote that in an internal memo, I imagine the engineering team would mutiny, but software quality is certainly an interesting topic where I continue to refine my thinking. There are so many software quality playbooks out there, and I increasingly believe that all these playbooks work in their intended context, but are often misapplied.

On Taste, Effort & Curiosity - again

When AI collapses how long it takes to ship, what’s left is judgment, experimentation, and knowing what not to build.

The Optimization Trap: Why Too Much Efficiency Makes Us Fragile - The Great Simplification

In this episode, Nate is joined by biologist and biophysicist Olivier Hamant to explore why living systems prioritize robustness over performance, and what that means for a civilization built almost entirely in the opposite direction.

The Imperfectionist: Navigating by aliveness

I’m amazed and very pleased to say that the UK paperback of Meditations for Mortals entered the Sunday Times bestsellers at number 9 this week, after being selected as a Waterst...

Quality Wednesdays: How we trained our team to see what doesn’t work - Linear

In early 2023 at an offsite in Tenerife, our European engineering team did a series of exercises that ended up changing the way we work.

Wicked problem

In planning and policy, a wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. It refers to an idea or problem that cannot be fixed, where there is no single solution to the problem; "wicked" does not indicate evil, but rather resistance to resolution. Another definition is "a problem whose social complexity means that it has no determinable stopping point". Because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems. Due to their complexity, wicked problems are often characterized by organized irresponsibility.

Intentions have a surprising amount of detail

Auteur managerialism, the myth of one-shotting, and the chindogufication of engineering

Repair Culture: Learning to Fix Instead of Replace – Wayfinders Now – Living small to gain abundance.

Repair culture is the growing mindset of choosing to fix what’s broken instead of immediately replacing it. It challenges a habit that has become almost automatic in modern life: when something stops working, we discard it. A new phone, a new appliance, a new chair, a new everything. Repair culture asks a quieter question: What […]

Overcommitted | Software Engineering and Tech Careers Insights

Overcommitted is where passion for the craft meets real talk about software engineering—from pull request philosophy and technical debt strategy to imposter syndrome and continuous learning, we are engineers committed to growing together and sharing the honest, thoughtful conversations that make you better at your job and your life.

What Functional Programmers Get Wrong About Systems - Ian Duncan

Type systems verify properties of programs. Production correctness is a property of systems. The gap between these is where the interesting failures live.