
The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time and the last 10% takes the another 200% - newentrepreneur
http://onista.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/the-first-90-of-a-project-takes-90-of-the-time-and-the-last-10-takes-the-another-200/
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jcromartie
I think I prefer this adage:

"the first 90 percent of the work is easy, the second 90 percent wears you
down, and the last 90 percent - the attention to detail - makes a good
product"

(from <http://www.pacifict.com/Story/>)

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caudicus
A friend of mine said something to me one day that really struck me - "I don't
think I'm humble enough to be a programmer". He has done programming in the
past, he knows what's up, and he knows that you need to put aside your ego and
spend just hours figuring out one tiny bug (that ends up being something
stupidly obvious in the end), days perfecting the last .1% of your project,
and so on. It's humbling. Not everyone can deal with that. It's just as much
of an aspect of a good coder as anything else.

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cstejerean
You will never finish the last 10% of a project. In software you're never more
than 90% done. EVER.

~~~
xirium
A completed website is a dead website. A completed application is a dead
application. A completed open source project is a dead open source project.

~~~
derefr
There are some programs that can be both in common use and "dead." yes(1),
echo(1) and the like come to mind.

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mixmax
I just started programming (always been the biz guy, but thought I might as
well learn to hack) and I have a habit of never starting a new module before
the current one works without any known bugs. This might take a bit longer,
but when I'm done I'm done - and usually there are only minor bugs to be
fixed.

Is this not the normal way of doing things, or am I missing something? Or is
it simply because I only do simple stuff? (currently doing a website with user
profiles, different sorts of to-do lists, ratings, gannt charts, a blog tool,
calendar, and some ajax thrown in for the hell of it)

Where, in your experience, does this last unseen mountain of work come from?
Am I about to be hit hard with something unexpected?

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yters
Yes, your approach is good and should work pretty well. However, in my
academic experience, the perception of "done" can be deceptive, even for a
well defined problem. The purpose of the saying is to make people wary of
thinking they are done.

Similarly, it is said that the point of debugging is to find bugs, not to
remove all bugs. Again, the idea is if you think you've found all the bugs,
you're probably wrong.

However, you may well be one of the lucky individuals who can understand the
entirity of the program in one go. And, it is good to attempt to do so, even
if you usually can't. Thinking through the entire logic of my programs helps a
lot as I debug.

~~~
mixmax
Thanks for the feedback.

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ConradHex
I think the real problem in this case is being unwilling to cut features, and
having too large of an initial feature set.

The last 10% always takes a long time, but it sounds like things are getting
out of hand here.

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doubleplus
Another 200% of what? The "90%" already taken? If you work on something for 90
hours, then for another 180 hours, that 90 hours was actually "the first 33%,"
so I guess I don't understand why he doesn't just refer to it as such. But
then we wouldn't have a blog post (with wonderful the grammar).

