
When Worse Is Better (Kent Beck) - tomse
https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/when-worse-is-better-incrementally-escaping-local-maxima/498576730175196
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skrebbel
I experienced reading this as a major slap in the face. When faced with a
local maximum, my immediate gut reaction is "hooray, major redesign!
whiteboards, here we come!". It's the part I like the most.

Yet, I know he's right. I'm going to have a hard time holding back and
accepting incremental change here, too.

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thaumaturgy
Then don't.

His is just another piece of advice in an industry where, like all others, no
piece of advice is universally applicable.

For example, when it comes to major refactoring of a large chunk of code that
has been in maintenance mode for a while, you can benefit from hindsight:
hopefully you've seen the code at work, you know the strengths and weaknesses
of the design, and you have an opportunity to build a new design with more
strengths and fewer weaknesses, because now you have a better understanding of
the problem you're trying to solve.

I don't think that what he's suggesting is all that radical, either. Is it
really so rare to move some system from one environment to another in
piecemeal fashion? I'm certain I've done it at least a few times. Is it now a
radical suggestion to break some arbitrary coding standards in order to
improve some functionality or untangle some mess? I should hope not.

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nnq
totally offtopic, but...: how/where can you get your picture traced in a
guilloche pattern like that (other than paying an artist to hand draw it)?

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kragen
Get the Wall Street Journal to do an article about you, which is how I assume
Kent did it.

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KentBeck
Yep. Fulfillment of a childhood dream, that. I'm just sad Ward didn't get his
picture in there too. He doesn't get his (large) share of the credit.

~~~
kragen
What was the article about? XP?

Surely Ward will get his picture in the WSJ in some kind of article about
Wikis, if it hasn't happened already.

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pella
"tl;dr If you can't make it better, make it worse."

