Fear is the mind-killer | Hacker News Reader

Fear is the mind-killer

startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com

42 points_pius6 comments

Allusion to Dune :)

     Fear is the mind-killer

That's not likely to be a great big secret in these parts. :)

But for those in the dark: http://alcoman.railfan.net/fear.html

Unfortunately, these actions generally work to increase the batch size of our work

That is the key. When your batch size goes up, your iteration speed generally goes down. Longer iterations mean you can't keep current with your users, and their frustration builds up. This can feed back in the form of second-guessed partly spurious requests, which often result in bugs and/or weird changes in your models, which results in more "best practices."

"If my religion is true, it will stand up to all my questioning; there is no need to fear." -- Unknown

He sure arrived at a different place than Bob Martin in his "What killed SmallTalk could kill Ruby" ( video at http://blip.tv/file/2089545 from RailsConf09 ). Even though Martin's not billing his subject as fear , don't his approaches to "professionalism in programming" (esp. Test-Driven Development) provide an alternate route to fearlessness => reducing the causes for fear, especially the "morass of bugs" that Artem comments about?

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