Both Sides of Everything
Wednesday, January 7 2009
I think the sentiment expressed in this strip is the single main sapper of my productivity when coding. Whenever I approach something that I haven’t yet nailed down the implementation details of, I become almost paralysed, trapped in a negotiation with myself on what the “easiest”, “best”, “cleanest” way to do it would be. There should be a term for it. “Implementation Anxiety”?
[With thanks to Sanjay Samani for the Calvin and Hobbes snap]
I think it was Wil Shipley who said that you should code something in the simplest way first, and then worry about extending it and optimizing it when you actually need to. Unfortunately, you can’t foresee every possible way that the code might be used and reused in the future, and you can’t solve every future problem now.
@luciuskwok Oh, I wholeheartedly agree. I’m not saying that I overdesign (at least, I hope I don’t); it’s deciding what the simplest way actually is that’s my problem…
Just pick two and let them fight it out.
Yes! Get stuck there all the time. My friend, Mr. Ghormley, calls it "options paralysis."