

Breaking the Rules - nathanh
http://blog.asmartbear.com/breaking-the-rules.html

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vanessa
I think the author probably meant this on a broad, business and marketing
strategy level, but the concept holds for programming and database design as
well. Until you have worked with highly scaled or long-lived programs, you
probably shouldn't make calls on what kind of "hacks" are okay and what
aren't. It's the knowledge of the rules and the experience of learning why
they're the rules that really enables you to break them with little cost and
sometimes huge advantage to your organization. I think this is true of NoSQL
solutions in some shops - until you understand the purpose of normalization
and the ways it affects data integrity, maintainability, performance, etc you
really shouldn't be allowed to "break the rules" by denormalizing, using only
unstructured document storage, etc. They certainly have a place and can be
great tools, but all of their weaknesses and problems manifest when
implemented blindly/without regard for "the rules" and where they came from.

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hammock
This is a great lesson that I learned from an English teacher in high school,
and it's a lesson that applies absolutely EVERYWHERE. The statement must be
taken in its entirety: If you know the rules, then you are allowed to break
them.

People try to "break the rules" without an understanding of why they were
there in the first place, and it comes out as shit. This applies to art,
programming, writing, basically anything creative.

The Baroque period had all kinds of customs that applied to music; if you take
music theory you will learn all about the rules of four-part harmony, no
parallel fifths, etc. But then once you learn these things and have a complete
understanding of why the rules are there, you can selectively break them to
great effect. You break them with the cognizance of what you're doing, you
break them to make a statement, or to explore new territory, or any number of
reasons. But you do it with PURPOSE, because you already understood the rules.

~~~
patio11
One of the privileges of being a writer is you get license to inflict horrible
violence upon the English language.

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mentat
This actually goes to the heart of a debate a friend and I have been having,
whether it's possible to create rules that have longer term usefulness.
Hopefully this isn't too off topic, but after reading Anathem and looking at
the Long Now stuff I thought, what sort of "disciplines" are useful for
creating organizations that can a long time preserving core values but
adapting external values (and being aware of that adaption). I tend to think
that rules or meta rules are possible in this space. My friend thinks that
rules are always too restrictive and you should just have sets of models you
can apply. Maybe this "only break the rules you really know" provides a path
to create rules and break them with purpose.

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entangld
The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more
technique there is, the less there is. -- Pablo Picasso

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psyklic
The author is slightly off the mark. All of these "rules" we hear -- for
advertising, powerpoint presenations, social conduct, etc. -- are not actually
rules. They are guidelines meant for beginners who need a starting point.

Most guidelines are written so that beginners avoid producing bad stuff -- not
with the intent to make great stuff.

Once beginners realize WHY these guidelines are suggested, then they also
realize how they can move beyond them and still deliver compelling results.

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DanielRibeiro
Reminded me of Kristine Kathryn Rusch's:

 _Rebels learn the rules better than the rule-makers do.

Rebels learn where the holes are, where the rules can be breached.

Become an expert at the rules.

Then break them with creativity and style._

~~~
anamax
"To live outside the law you must be honest" Bob Dylan

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delineal
Sometimes the best way to learn the rules quickly is by trying to break them.
Try to do the impossible so that you can find out what is possible. I think
it's important to make a distinction between the actual rules and the rules as
they are understood or documented. Our understanding of rules tends to change
over time.

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michael_dorfman
Please, _please_ don't refer to Picasso as a "surrealist."

~~~
sabon
So how should he be best described? No irony here, just asking so that next
time I know better how to refer to him.

~~~
ora600
Cubist.

~~~
michaelpinto
Picasso actually worked in a number of styles — Cubism being an early one.

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flipside
Unwritten rules are the most fun to break imo. They can also be the hardest
because most people don't realize they are there.

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mnutt
I agree with the author that it's probably best to learn rules before you
break them, but is there any inherent value in things produced by breaking
rules you know over breaking rules you don't know? Or is it merely that by
knowing the rules you'll be able to break them to better effect?

Would a work of Shakespeare be less great if it were written by 1 of infinity
monkeys?

~~~
chc
There is inherent value in the process, not the product. If bad process ends
in a good product, that's nice, but about as likely as a million dollars
suddenly materializing in front of you. There are an almost limitless number
of permutations of any idea that break the rules. By understanding the rules
and their function, you can intelligently choose to disregard some of them but
still have a good idea which of those infinite ideas are good.

To return to the monkeys: If you have infinite monkeys, you're never going to
find Shakespeare even I'd one of them wrote it. You have to have a decent idea
what a Shakespearean sonnet looks like or you are never going to find the
right monkey, it and would certainly help if you had some way to organize the
monkeys so that you had a finite search space for Monkey Shakespeare.

~~~
thwarted
Not challenging, just clarifying, because I agree.

In "given an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters,
eventually one of them will produce the script to Hamlet", the key word is
"eventually", and speaks to nothing about the quality of the monkeys or of
their writing. It's a rephrasing of Bogosort. If you try to optimize the
bogosort process in some way so it finishes in less than infinite time in the
average case, it's not bogosort anymore.

And bogosort is exactly what you don't want when you break the rules. Being
able to break the rules is about knowing which rules to break and how to break
them, not trying things randomly hoping it gets better. But one also has to
watch out for being too knowledgeable and not being able to, uh, "think
outside the box" when looking for new things to try.

To quote Web Dude, "did you restart it three times?"

