This post has long since scrolled off the front page but for posterity here is the best part:
"The fact is that good system design takes time; it is the sort of thing that requires hard solo thinking along with long discussions with other engineers. There are days when no real progress seems to be made, and other days when the only progress is to realize that what you thought was progress over the previous few days or weeks was in fact a wrong turn that won’t really work. Such a realization is progress. In fact, such a realization may be the most important kind of progress, as it can save huge problems later in the project. But to a manager it may not seem to be moving forward."
I recently came to this exact realization. So when I saw this post I had to see if it was in there. And it is!
"Like patterns or open source, there is considerable theology
in the characterizations of agile methods, and I don’t wish to
get caught up in such theological debates"
Finally I see a sane stance somewhere :) This article is pure Gold on a lot of fronts and seems to have also aged decently well.
"About the series - The Perspectives series is a collection of essays written by individuals from Sun Microsystems Laboratories. These essays express ideas and opinions held by the authors on subjects of general rather than technical interest."
Would someone know where I could find other essays from this collection?
"You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction". - from the Semantic Scholar introduction
"The fact is that good system design takes time; it is the sort of thing that requires hard solo thinking along with long discussions with other engineers. There are days when no real progress seems to be made, and other days when the only progress is to realize that what you thought was progress over the previous few days or weeks was in fact a wrong turn that won’t really work. Such a realization is progress. In fact, such a realization may be the most important kind of progress, as it can save huge problems later in the project. But to a manager it may not seem to be moving forward."
I recently came to this exact realization. So when I saw this post I had to see if it was in there. And it is!