> My goal with the early sub-projects isn't to build a *finished* sub-component, it is to build a good enough sub-component so I can move on to the next thing on the path to a demo.
This is so enlightening. And I realized that to do this, one has to "skip" something. Other folks mention they ignore code modularity when doing this, I don't think I will do that, keeping code clean and reading/working in such a codebase actually make me satisfied and motivated. For me, I am going to "skip" algorithms, data strucuture and performance.
I have huge respect for Mitchell, it's impressive what he achieved.
I agree with all the points of this article and would like to add one: Have a quick feedback loop. For me, it's really motivating to be able to make a change and quickly see the results. Many problems just vanish or become tangible to solve when you playfully modify your source code and observe the effect.
This perfectly aligns with my experience.
Every large project I have worked on showed a clear correlation between the ease of setup and running and the number of problems on the project, like bugs and missed deadlines.
E2E tests in a high ratio to other tests will cause problems. They’re slow and brittle and become a job all on their own. It’s possible that they might help at the start of debugging, but try to isolate the bugs to smaller units of code (or interactions between small pieces of code).
>This is an area where I think experience actually hurts. I've seen senior engineers get bogged down building the perfect thing and by the time they get a demo, they realize it sucks. The implementation doesn't suck, but the product or feature itself actually sucks.
This resonates with me. Sometime i want to "turn off" my brain and write shitty code.
Back in the day, i made a lot of toy project. Sometime all the source code is in single file. No respect to modularity. But it was fun, and it worked. Now just try to finish a toy project seem much harder than ever.
I think this is why often new languages get so hyped early on. A bunch of inexperienced people get to leave all the boring “best practices” back in their old languages
Great read, but I was expecting something different based on the title.
This sounds like his approach working on personal projects. I'm really curious about large technical team projects though. What's the best approach to getting stuff done and making sure everyone is working towards the same goal etc.
After 15 years I have yet to see a technical project that hasn't run over budget, over time, under delivered or burnt people out.
I'm sure there are people out there with counter examples who know exactly how to deliver projects at a massive scale. Any links/suggested reading would be appreciated!
"over budget" is only an issue if there's really no more money, and I think it's pretty rare for IT projects. Most of the time it's just someone complaining the estimate was off.
"Over time" is the same, it's an issue if there was a real deadline, but the best practice is not plan unflexible events (e.g. do a huge PR campaign with the date on it) before it's basically done.
"under delivered" is a matter of expectations, the real pointis that it was delivered at all.
> or burnt people out.
This one is not like the others. People shouldn't burn out over bullshit deadlines.
I feel there is a balance to strike with rushing to a demo. ..
(maybe it's an implicit tension between the satisfaction of finishing a component and getting a demo)
I think this is where the choice of language makes a big difference.
In Clojure, the difference between a "component" and a separate library/application is literally just adding a `deps.edn` file and then pointing to the directory from the parent project.
I think breaking the project in to small achievable goals is very sensible. But if you take the extra time to make the component stand on its own as a mini-lib .. it's very satisfying. For instance I had to write a "component" that would read some GeoJSON and segment it (it's took me a couple of days and was mostly a wrapped around GDAL or something). I could have hacked together a solution to rush to a demo - but instead I made a small little library out of it. When I was done with it, I had a sense of "I made a thing". To be clear.. it's still kind of ugly and I would be horrified if someone else tried to use it and submitted PRs.. but it's also not a coupled tangle of code in my larger codebase.
as he says "Build for yourself" - the library/application should only do what you need
By contrast, if I was working in C++ making an API and decoupled library would be such a chore that'd never bother
The most important aspect is that this all ends up not just much more satisfying at every step - but it makes your code incredibly decoupled and refactorable. The more you rush to a demo the more your code is coupled and hard to refactor.
> My goal with the early sub-projects isn't to build a *finished* sub-component, it is to build a good enough sub-component so I can move on to the next thing on the path to a demo.
This is so enlightening. And I realized that to do this, one has to "skip" something. Other folks mention they ignore code modularity when doing this, I don't think I will do that, keeping code clean and reading/working in such a codebase actually make me satisfied and motivated. For me, I am going to "skip" algorithms, data strucuture and performance.
I agree with all the points of this article and would like to add one: Have a quick feedback loop. For me, it's really motivating to be able to make a change and quickly see the results. Many problems just vanish or become tangible to solve when you playfully modify your source code and observe the effect.
This resonates with me. Sometime i want to "turn off" my brain and write shitty code.
Back in the day, i made a lot of toy project. Sometime all the source code is in single file. No respect to modularity. But it was fun, and it worked. Now just try to finish a toy project seem much harder than ever.
This sounds like his approach working on personal projects. I'm really curious about large technical team projects though. What's the best approach to getting stuff done and making sure everyone is working towards the same goal etc.
After 15 years I have yet to see a technical project that hasn't run over budget, over time, under delivered or burnt people out.
I'm sure there are people out there with counter examples who know exactly how to deliver projects at a massive scale. Any links/suggested reading would be appreciated!
TBH these are fine in my book.
"over budget" is only an issue if there's really no more money, and I think it's pretty rare for IT projects. Most of the time it's just someone complaining the estimate was off.
"Over time" is the same, it's an issue if there was a real deadline, but the best practice is not plan unflexible events (e.g. do a huge PR campaign with the date on it) before it's basically done.
"under delivered" is a matter of expectations, the real pointis that it was delivered at all.
> or burnt people out.
This one is not like the others. People shouldn't burn out over bullshit deadlines.
My approach to building large technical projects - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36161397 - June 2023 (27 comments)
I think this is where the choice of language makes a big difference. In Clojure, the difference between a "component" and a separate library/application is literally just adding a `deps.edn` file and then pointing to the directory from the parent project.
I think breaking the project in to small achievable goals is very sensible. But if you take the extra time to make the component stand on its own as a mini-lib .. it's very satisfying. For instance I had to write a "component" that would read some GeoJSON and segment it (it's took me a couple of days and was mostly a wrapped around GDAL or something). I could have hacked together a solution to rush to a demo - but instead I made a small little library out of it. When I was done with it, I had a sense of "I made a thing". To be clear.. it's still kind of ugly and I would be horrified if someone else tried to use it and submitted PRs.. but it's also not a coupled tangle of code in my larger codebase.
as he says "Build for yourself" - the library/application should only do what you need
By contrast, if I was working in C++ making an API and decoupled library would be such a chore that'd never bother
The most important aspect is that this all ends up not just much more satisfying at every step - but it makes your code incredibly decoupled and refactorable. The more you rush to a demo the more your code is coupled and hard to refactor.