You have eloquently elaborated on a truth I came to realize many years ago:
Cooking well (from a recipe) is the art of having enough experience to know what unwritten assumptions the recipe author has made.
Cooking well (from a recipe) is the art of having enough experience to know what unwritten assumptions the recipe author has made.
I mean if I give a developer some instructions, or read some from stackoverflow , they only work the best if I already somewhat familiar or expert knowledge to understand it.
Cooking shouldn't be any different.
Writing small user apps doesn't translate to building apps for millions of users, the same way cooking for your family doesn't translate to cooking in a restaurant or wedding, or to how McDonald's ( google of the cooking world ?) should cook.
Having worked at a cook at McDonald's, I don't know if I would call it "google of the cooking world". From my experience, McDonald's cooking is highly streamlined and focused on reproducing the same experience at some level (for example French McDonald's is not the same as American McDonald's but the fries and Big mac are still relatively the same).
...having enough experience to know what unwritten assumptions the O/S author, language author, spec writer has made.
She takes a recipe and try's out various different recipes to work out the best version eg CTM (Chiken Tika Masala)
Her "How to cook the perfect..." series is my go-to for classic dishes. She takes advice from multiple cooks and books, and distils her "perfect" recipe from there. That is how I cook; I read multiple recipes, and take the advice I like best. Cloake makes that easy.
She had a recipe for croque monsieur up recently; it's spot-on.
Or in other words; those assumptions are often very personal and therefore you need to develop and refine them for you as well.