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Comment by bch | Hacker News Reader

> “let's not make perfect the enemy of good."

Nuanced, but I’ve heard “don’t let perfection be the enemy of completion”, which is real in the cases of not shipping because one is constantly polishing/perfecting, or, as I heard sitting beside phk[0] at BSDCan commenting on rejecting some environmental sensors into FreeBSD, something to the effect of “We need ‘good’, not ‘good enough’.”, which draws a line at accepting janky “solutions” that are architecturally weak, or otherwise look obviously problematic.

[0] https://people.freebsd.org/~phk/

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I always thought of that as “yak-shaving,” or “bikeshedding.”

Quality takes longer. Sometimes, significantly longer, for many reasons. That’s why something top-shelf, costs so much more than commodity, when it doesn’t seem to have much more, in the way of features.

Many orgs aren’t interested in spending that much extra time on it (which is their prerogative). The customer base tends to be smaller, and a lot more fickle. It’s really difficult to make a living, doing top-Quality work.

Source: I worked for many years, for a company known for top-shelf stuff. I’m quite familiar with Quality as an everyday feature.

I love the social/cultural aspects of our engineering discipline.

> I always thought of that as “yak-shaving,” or “bikeshedding.”

I think of yak-shaving as ending up (by lack of discipline, or perhaps out of necessity) working on some supporting aspect of a supporting aspect of a supporting aspect... in service of the original task.

So, a potential time suck, for sure, but "perfection is the enemy of completion" doesn't have to be that deep - if we're throwing out more clever phrases and war stories - another phrase that comes to mind about just "polishing" and insisting it's not good enough to ship yet is it's (slightly NSFW)

"just like masturbation - it feels good, but you're only f*cking yourself". You need to ship.

Bike Shedding I think of as social - nearly Peter Principle in practice - everybody thinks they've got something to contribute to the construction of the bike shed because it's a thing that's easy to manage, and people want to be helpful and/or make a mark.

Not sure why you were flagged to death, I had all the same thoughts. Vouched.

These phrases have a different meanings and it’s important to highlight them

Sorry if your reply got dinged (looks all right to me, now). It was spot-on.

I think of "Yak-Shaving" as working on peripheral aspects of the project, to the detriment of the main path. Easy to justify, as they are "working on the project," but maybe not helping to significantly advance it.

I think of "Bikeshedding" as working on another aspect of the project (or a completely different project), because we want to (often, because it is more approachable or pleasant). This often becomes a problem, when the project is getting near shipping, as there's a ton of really boring stuff that needs to be done.

"Perfecting," on the other hand, can look like either of the above, but is, indeed, working on the main path, and advancing the project; just maybe not quickly.

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