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Comment by LastTrain | Hacker News Reader

Many or most of us are both types - because sometimes the first approach is warranted, and other times the second approach is. I would warn against pigeonholing people - for a time worn view on this google the “the bozo bit”.

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Yeah I find myself switching between these two perspectives, so I don't think that one of them characterizes me directly. Actually, very often when building an MVP it makes a lot of sense to just say “let's allow people to do that to keep it simple and just assume that they either don't do it or that later they can explain why they felt the need to do it.” For instance if you can take inputs from one system and push outputs to another system, and those have overlaps, you might assume that your users never create cycles where your software starts pulling in the stuff that it pushed out, so you never check the sorts of loops to make sure that you're making progress, and maybe someday someone configures an infinite loop in it... In practice non-technical users at a small company don't trigger this and are surprised if you build things that read from Y and push back into X, “how is that even possible”.

I think a lot of people may be predisposed to one style or another depending on their personality or background but I agree that part of what makes experience so valuable in our field is being able to make good judgement about when to solve a problem with technology, with process, or not at all.

I think it's also a matter of experience. You learn the hard way that people don't follow instructions, don't read their email, and often try to use the software in ways you never imagined.

I was much more of a type 1 engineer when I was young. I read my email, I read instructions... doesn't everyone?

I actually think I’m too much of the first type and this article makes me realise I probably trust people too much to do the rightTM thing

It’s good to reflect once in a while, but don’t discount your hard earned experience!

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