The age of redo

We are in the age of “redo”.

The days of software prophets jealously guarding their architecture and obsessing over every detail are over. By the time you get it right, the goals have shifted, probably even transformed.

I say this as someone who’s as guilty of software perfectionism as anybody.

Everything moves too fast. You can’t be emotionally attached to your software. A new approach blows past what you’ve been building by hand? You just have to say who cares, I’m moving on. That’s just the way the world is now.

Constant reevaluation is really all that you can do to keep up in this environment.

Software egos used to make sense. The products that stood the test of time and didn’t collapse under their own weight were carefully grown over time by a visionary architect.

Is clean code dead? not exactly. But building something exactly how you want it AND keeping up? You can only pick one. Don’t get anchored to the moment you tried something revolutionary.

We might not get it right, but we can redo it fast. With more experience and better methods.

“Radical humility and endless paranoia are the only product strategies that make sense right now”

• @clairevo

(Responding to a post by @clairevo.)