

Right balance between technical and pragmatic: does it exist? - rdcastro
http://blog.sacaluta.com/2012/02/right-balance-between-technical-and.html

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strictfp
Thanks for sharing. I'm having the same struggle and can really relate. I feel
very lonely as a consultant trying to show a whole project how to be pragmatic
and not only care about making better hashtables, but to actually care about
the customer and the product as a whole. The funny thing is that some
companies (generally younger and smaller ones) can be so very professional,
while bigger ones house teams which are really stagnant and have a completely
unrealistic view on software development. I suppose it's logical considering
the "do or die" situation that most startups are in, but its sad to see these
money black- holes thrive within large organisations.

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tim_h
The right balance between technical and pragmatic is project specific. Here
are a couple of heuristics I use to find it.

1) Minimize the overall time investment required to have an acceptable
solution to the problem. Time investment includes maintenance and debugging.

2) Make sure the marginal benefit to additional time spent in one area of the
project exceeds the opportunity cost of focusing on other areas. E.g. It's
good to spend a lot of time on getting the overall architecture right but it
matters far less to optimize the business logic (for one thing it tends to
change more often and for another it's hardly ever the performance
bottleneck).

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olalonde
I just stumbled upon this xkcd and thought it was somewhat on topic:
<http://xkcd.com/974/>

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j45
I'm not sure if it should be being technical vs. being pragmatic.

It's not a black or white issue like pregnancy.

It's possible to be pragmatically technical, and technically pragmatic.

It involves building discipline, from being burnt from over-engineering or
trivializing matters. That's all us, no one else.

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Tangaroa
Perhaps "technical" and "pragmatic" are the wrong terms to use, and the
conflict is about being detail-oriented versus focusing on the broader scope.

