Abstractivate: Hyperproductive development

http://blog.jessitron.com/2017/06/the-most-productive-circumstances-for.html
Abstractivate: Hyperproductive development

Rating: 6

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TL;DR: the most productive development happens when one person knows the system intimately because they wrote it; this is in conflict with growing a system beyond what one person maintains.

If you are this person, please realize that no one else experiences this work the way you do. For other people, every change is scary, because they don't know what effect it will have. They spend hours forming theories about how a piece works, and then struggle to confirm this with experiment; they don't have the testing setup you do. They study every log message instead of skimming over the irrelevant ones, the ones you've skipped over so often you don't even see them anymore. By the time they do figure something out, you've changed it; they can't gain comprehension of the system as quickly as you can alter it. When they do make a change, they spend lots of time limiting the scope of it, because they don't know which changes will cause problems. They get it wrong, because they don't know the users personally; communication is hard.

If you are this person, please go easy on everyone else. You are a synthetic biologist and can alter the DNA of the system from within; they are xenosurgeons and have to cut in through the skin and try not to damage unfamiliar organs.