Aim Small, Miss Small: Writing Correct Programs

Or like at my (giant) employer - aim for the Big Bang, ship nothing, frustrate everyone.

OMG -- agree.

"How about we fix 3 of 5 use cases in the next release and finish the harder ones later?"

"No, we have to fix them all at once."

INT. OFFICE - DAY

MRING'S BOSS

"Ah, I see. You missed last night's email. The number is now seven."

Right now, this hits so close to home it's scary.

Personally, I'm always astounded that one would even need to explain the whole scientific debugging mindset explicitly. Then again, I'm regularly proven wrong when I eventually meet the next guy who would rather burn incense and read tea leaves for a week instead of using some sort of directed experimental approach. -_-

His first part about "aim" is soooo dead on. It usually happens after I started coding. I find a slack message to a co-worker asking them how to do something, but then having to explain EXACTLY why I need to do this is enough to basically solve my problem. By the time I am done writing the message I have thought of the problem, the rationalle, the why, the where, etc (I don't want to just ask a question I can answer on my own), that I never send the message and thus rubber ducking succeeded.