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The Insidiousness of The Slow Solution


In software development, slow solutions can be worse than no progress at all. I'll even say its usually worse and if you find yourself making slow progress on a problem, consider stopping while you're a head.

Its easy to see why fast progress is better: either you solve the problem or you prove a proposed solution wrong and find a better one. Even a total standstill in pushing forward on a task or a bug or a request can force you to seek out new information or a second opinion.

Slow solutions, on the other hand, is kind of sneaky. Its insidious. Slow solution is related the Sunk Cost Fallacy, but maybe worse. Slow solutions have you constantly dripping more of your time, energy, and hope into a path that's still unproven, constantly digging a hole. Slow solutions are deceptive, because they still do offer real progress. It is hard to justify abandoning it or trying another route, because it is "working", technically.

We tend to romanticize the late night hacking on a hard problem. We hold in esteem the feeling of banging out heads for hours before gold. We have to be on the look out for the solutions that leech our time and our energy and our souls. Even the solutions that actually work! Maybe you've got a path that will lead to the solution, but if it takes you forever and sucks out your soul: find something else.

If a path is an objectively better one maybe even compromise on the destination. Hawaii and Virginia both have beaches and you need a break.
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