Comment by _yosefk
10 years ago
"What software projects have stood the test of time? The ones that were painstakingly thought out and progressed slowly."
I kinda think that the opposite is true, or at least as true as your statement (meaning that at least as much half-baked stuff rushed out the door 'stood the test of time' as did stuff that took a lot of time to ship.) Unix, C, Windows, PHP, JavaScript...
To offer an example of a project that has stood the test of time far longer than the ones you mentioned, consider Fortran. The first compiler was released in 1957, several years after it was first proposed. The specification took a couple of years to complete. This was over 60 years ago, and even now they are releasing an update to Fortran (Fortran 2015).
Even in the examples you mentioned, Unix, C, and Javascript are all run through standards bodies now. It took years for C11 to be finalized. It's been years since ES6 has started development. PHP7 has taken a few years (and a version update before even being released).
Windows, depending on who you're talking to, can be a good example of half-baked, or an example of why half-baked is terrible, with regards to Windows 8 and Windows 10 releases.
This feels like a classic example of survivorship bias. Based on the nature of computing resources in the 1950's and academic culture in general, it's likely that all language/compiler projects of the era were planned deliberately and slowly. One of them survived.
So all projects that have "stood the test of time" for that length of time have that attribute. Also having that attribute are all the projects of that era that failed miserably.
May be you and your parent comment are both right? Release the first few versions very fast (even if it is not good) and if it is successful, then slow down, redesign etc? Examples include PHP and JS
You can totally screw the pooch with this approach and squander all your momentum, as well. See Perl 6, OpenGL Longs Peak
I think there's a big difference between working quickly and working rushing a project. Doing things thoroughly and correctly is of course well worth it; you can complete this work as efficiently as possible without cutting corners and building half-baked products.