'Doing it right' vs 'Getting it done'
Back in November at RubyConf, Micah Martin did a great talk on Kata and Sparing. It was very inspirational to me, and I've been mulling over the idea of katas ever since then. Over the last couple months, as I've been focusing my attention on craftsmanship, the idea of focused and deliberate practice kept rising to the surface. After the first Code Retreat in Ann Arbor, I really had some specific thoughts on the influence of practice on our work. So, as I was driving back from Weberville, MI, I stopped outside Toledo at a metro park and recorded some thoughts.
The main topic of the thoughts is the idea of 'doing it right' vs 'getting it done' and why those have to be in opposition. The techniques that you can call 'your own' are the ones that happen when you have a deadline looming. How do you make it so that those techniques are the ones that you know lead to quality code? Focused practice.
Enjoy! And, as always, please either comment below or write a response on your own blog. Please send me a link to your blog entry, and I'll update this post to link to it.
[Michael Finney wrote a great blog post proposing some ideas for a java practicing project. Check it out.]
[Over a year ago, Chris Cyvas wrote a blog entry about discipline in software development. These concepts and ideas have been building for a while now; I think it is time we bring them to the forefront.]
Road Thoughts - Practice from Corey Haines on Vimeo.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
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3 comments:
Nice video post.
Surrounded by the smell of burnt popcorn and listening to the video really drove home some thoughts.
To you, the watcher of the video, carefully try the following for an enhanced effect:
1) Burn some popcorn. Realize that you got the popcorn done, but it stinks.
2) Throw that popcorn away.
3) Cook some more popcorn with a little more care.
4) Watch the video.
5) Enjoy the popcorn while watching the video, but smell the nasty popcorn smell that lingers.
A waste of popcorn? Sure. Now do the above with code instead of popcorn.
1) Burn out some code. Realize you got it done, but it stinks.
2) Throw that code away.
... you get the idea.
Hmmm. Now my wife has opened a window to the cold air outside. If only she had done that while I was watching the video of Corey being outside in the cold. Oh well. (Brrr)
Enjoy!
I had written a nice little comment here, but the Blogger software ate my comment when it belched up my WordPress creds. Blogger Fail.
At any rate, I wrote on this topic a while back - at least somewhat related:
http://chriscyvas.com/2007/12/19/is-discipline-a-dirty-word/
Thanks Cory. It really spoke to me.
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