
Quality Is Fractal - kirillzubovsky
http://ramenapp.net/post/53a4b26b35343800020a0000
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jenntoda
Agreed, but I'd argue that striving for perfection in every detail is a bit of
first world problem, and it also assumes availability of infinite resources.
Starve a man for enough days, then give him a steak on a stick and I'll
guarantee that he'll be happy just to tear the meat apart with his teeth
caveman style, forget the formalities of napkin, plate and utensils. Same goes
for software, esp. startups, where the first challenge is to get to having
something that will do a right job however imperfectly, than the wrong job,
however perfectly.

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camdez
I don’t find this to be an accurate description.

Yes, quality (often) has this _one bad apple spoils the whole bunch_ property.
If we have to have a math metaphor we might say that quality is
_multiplicative_ , in the sense that one low value in a sequence still impacts
the entire product. Or we might say that quality has an _absorbing element_ ,
by which we mean that any zero value kills the whole set (100 * 100 * 100 * 0
still equals 0). But _fractal_ means that we see self-similarity at all
levels. That hardly seems to be the case.

According to the original argument, bad software implies bad programmers which
implies a bad company. That seems not only incorrect but also non-
constructive. It ignores (e.g.) the idea that good employees could release bad
products under bad management. Likewise, great programmers can write
applications which are terrible to use. There are other skills involved in
that process (interaction design, for instance). The criteria for evaluating
programmers and software are vastly different and thus it doesn’t make sense
to say that there’s a fractal relationship between these two vastly different
kinds of entities.

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sutterbomb
While I mostly agree with the premise, I'm worried many people will
internalize the wrong lesson. It seems to imply that quality, as implicitly
defined by the examples provided, is a barometer of success. The reality is
that there are numerous vectors that you can compete on outside of quality and
still be wildly successful.

I'd be happy to have 3 lines of subpar code if it gave me an advantage on
other competitive angles.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Sure, there are many routes to success. In general though I think quality is
one of the strongest and can lead to the most enduring products and companies.

Nevertheless, "quality" is an ill-defined concept, and it's easy to be led
astray in pursuit of notional quality at the expense of real-world practical
improvements to your product. For example, cost and ease of use are not
independent factors. Consider VHS vs. BETAMAX video recording as a classic
example. BETAMAX had superior recording fidelity, but it was significantly
more expensive, and expense plus network effect was a major factor in the
adoption of video tape standards.

Part of the "quality fractal" are meta-features such as robustness, elegance,
usability, performance, and cost. It doesn't matter how theoretically perfect
your product is if it's not practical or it's too expensive to serve the
market effectively. A Bugatti Veyron may seem in many respects to be a
"perfect" automobile, but it's not. The luxurious interior, amazing build
quality, and high performance make it easy to overlook the downsides such as
the extreme cost, low mileage, low lifetime of many components (such as the
tires), high maintenance cost, etc. In most regards a Toyota Camry is a
superior car to a Veyron. That's a result that it's very difficult to arrive
at if you focus too myopically on the ideal of "quality" without looking at
things holistically.

Compare, for example, consider the world-wide-web vs. project Xanadu, or Linux
vs. Hurd. It's so easy to let perfect be the enemy of good. The concept of
"worse is better" is on the surface a refutation of the importance of quality
but in reality it's just a reminder that "quality" isn't always what we think
it is and practicality is always by far the most important quality.

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gbaygon
About a month ago it was posted an article[1] about why Van Halen requested
the infamous no brown M&M's clause in their concert contracts, it struck me as
a practical way of measuring overall quality on a complex situattion.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7754334](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7754334)

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nostromo
I like the analogy, but is good advice to software startups?

"Finished is better than perfect" is probably a better startup philosophy.
I've seen too many friends waste time on the nth refactoring of their code
rather than focusing on shipping and proving customer value.

~~~
Swizec
"Finished is better than perfect [ _as long as it isn 't crap_]"

I've seen too many products become a miserable mess because people believed in
"finished is better than perfect". But that's something you learn when you're
rewriting your code for the nth time to add the nth feature because otherwise
you just can't fit anything new in there.

But as I always say on these occasions, please keep shipping bad code. I make
good money fixing it.

~~~
neurobro
Ah, but could your clients afford to hire you to clean up their messes if they
hadn't finished something first?

~~~
Swizec
The clients I've worked with from the get go maintained enough flexibility to
finish something every couple of weeks ;)

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the_cat_kittles
You explain the concept, but where do you offer any evidence to support it? I
don't dismiss the concept, in fact I think its an important one, but if you
are making such a bold assertion, you would be well served to have something
supporting your claim.

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CGamesPlay
Strongly agree. I'd love to see the study or what Nathan Bowers wrote.

~~~
th3iedkid
googling i ended up here for Nathan bowers article
[http://web.archive.org/web/20120214085940/http://uxhero.com/...](http://web.archive.org/web/20120214085940/http://uxhero.com/ux-
theory/quality-is-fractal/)

Guess we mentioned fractals

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briantakita
The path of mastery is also fractal. You can iterate & zoom in on concepts &
practices. Over time, repeating patterns will be seen & seemingly unrelated
concepts will be connected in simple ways.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Absolutely. Mastery is knowing what details to pay attention to. When you're
learning, you don't know which ones, so you pay attention to all of them until
they progressively become more automatic.

This requires a lot of focus and mental energy, but it deeply rewarding in
it's own right.

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lifeisstillgood
I will lay a decent amount of money this is the next meme - it is succinct and
yet once you understand applicable everywhere.

I will certainly be quoting the phrase "quality is fractal" \- so will you
soon:-)

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mooneater
Agreed. The implication is, to change a low-quality X to a high-quality X is a
huge amount of work, that scales super-linearly to the complexity of X.

