Time
Slow down, think, and create models.
Quote category four in the Desktop Don Reference (DDR) is about Time. Everyone gets the same amount of time every day, unless they are in space or flying through different timezones. What we choose to do with the time each day is what makes the difference.
Time
I won’t take a lot of time explaining the quotes in this blog so it is a two minute read. The quotes all come from the same article by Larry Constantine in a book with the title Beyond Chaos.
Slow down to speed up.
In the book, the job of a bomb squad is described. The job is time critical, and can’t be rushed. Bomb squads have to look at a clock and decide if they have enough time to diffuse a bomb following their bomb diffusing standards and procedures. If there is not enough time, it doesn’t matter how fast they go. If any mistakes are made, their clock stops abruptly.
What does it mean to me?
When we rush we make mistakes. We take shortcuts. We forget things. We miss things. We quickly move from a feeling of going super fast to a complete stop. We should understand the time we have available, and decide up front what can reasonably be done in that time. We need to be methodical and pace ourselves. Software development is an ultra long distance relay race, not an individual sprint.
Thinking saves time.
What does it mean to me?
Software development is not a typing test. We’re not measured on how many words per minute we can type. We are measured on creating working software that can be maintained. If we can slow down and take the time to sharpen our axe, then we will be able to take less time cutting down the tree. Focus on enhancing our IDE, other tools, and/or leverage existing libraries to save time.
Modeling saves time.
What does it mean to me?
A picture saves a thousand words. A model that can be evolved, persisted, communicated, executed, and code generated can save us from having to write thousands of lines of code. Coding is not always the problem to solve. Figure out how we can model our problems first. A model that everyone understand can help us organize work so we can share work equally with other members of the team.
That’s all for Time
I hope you enjoyed the read, and will stay tuned for category number five: Teamwork. If you haven’t already, you can read about categories one through three: Simplicity , Quality , and Process.
Thanks for reading!
I am the creator of and committer for the Eclipse Collections OSS project, which is managed at the Eclipse Foundation. Eclipse Collections is open for contributions.
