Humans & Mistakes | #112

Approaches in software development -- or anything else -- that don't take ordinray human failings as their starting point are prone to dramatic failure. "The Impossible Human" is, well, noticeably uncommon. Let's dig in on that. Some years back, I made content for a CMS that had a whole lot of overlapping parts, each with its own special language. I found it very difficult to express myself quickly & cleanly, and, it being me, I complained about it a lot. And very often, the responses I received were in the form of "It's easy, just remember X." It still being me, I became sullen and resentful, and was largely unproductive for long stretches. "It's easy, just remember these 371 simple rules" is a formula for disaster, because it's an approach based on "The Impossible Human". Ordinary humans don't remember 371 simple rules about anything they haven't already mastered.

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