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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

this is partly why I advocate a slow code movement similar to the slow food movement. instead of sprinting I would like to walk to the destination, avoid the pains of broken ankles and repairing shoes whilst running in them.

I would like to explore to find a sane and reasonable approach and not be driven by artificial deadlines guessed at three months ago but by todays business need.

i would like to actually be measured on business value generated, not lines of code written.

I would like to improve and simplify, deliver real value and savour the joy of actually creating.

this may of course explain why I feel totally unproductive at times

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I think that is entirely in line with the true values of agile, which haven't really gotten through.

Slow food isn't about slowness for the sake of slowness. It's just about being realistic and interested in the long-term. It's about saving energy and mental stress.

One beautiful expression of this ideal is in "Domain-Driven Design."

I'm not disagreeing - just it's pretty clear the main concept that got through was "sprint".

had a rant recently on

Agile in the sense you are describing really has the wrong name. Agile implies fast; from Apple's Dictionary:

able to move quickly and easily; able to think and understand quickly

Agile should have been called Adaptable or some other name that has less implication of speed and more implication of accomodation of unknown or changing requirements.

No putting that toothpaste back in the tube at this point though.

Though this has the same problem as "cheap". People always equate "fast" or "quick" with "quick right now" and "cheap" as "cheap right now". There are enough examples in long-term projects that this is not true (though the converse is true, as well. And those problems which transist from short-term to long-term are just nasty)

To me, agility has connotations with being quick (reflexes) and adaptable. It's probably from the RPG's that I've played.

Just as "fast food" in not unhealthy because of the "fast" part (there's actually a ton of healthy "fast food" if you actually look for it), but because moving fast is hard and cool, so people cut corners instead of accepting that "slow is how they go" (like re-re-...-re-frying in the same oil as a way for "faster profit" for the fast food industry, or writing code with no/bad tests/documentation).

People should try and find their "natural speed" when coding, and figure out other personal special abilities they have instead of "speed", stead of trying to keep up with the fastest guy in the room and being afraid to give estimates that are x times longer than his, and managers should accept that people work and think at different speeds and "slow" != "stupid", as most Americans tend to use "slow" in everyday lingo.

I too am a slow programmer.

I have seen so many furious sprints towards the 'finished' system with so little knowledge of what actually needs to be built. The only part that has changed recently is that there is now typically a unit test suite along side that correctly tests the wrong thing.

I think the PostgreSQL community gets this right. The only deadlines are if you want your feature in the upcoming release, or if you can wait another year.

Seems to be paying off quite well. What other database can ship reliably every year with major new features and all kinds of improvements on many axes? And people still say the code is readable and the reliability is solid.

Related: I've stopped using the term "sprint" as it is, by definition, a non-sustainable pace.

Yes, where can I sign on?

yes yes yes yes yes! Great to hear this sentiment being expressed.

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