Comment by pclowes
3 days ago
Highly Agree.
Speed of all kinds is incredibly important. Give me all of it.
- Fast developers
- Fast test suites
- Fast feedback loops
- Fast experimentation
Someone (Napoleon?) is credited with saying "quantity has a quality all its own", in software it is "velocity has a quality all its own".
As long as there is some rigor and you aren't shipping complete slop, consistently moving very quickly fixes almost every other deficiency.
- It makes engineering mistakes cheaper (just fix them fast)
- It make product experimentation easy (we can test this fast and revert if needed)
- It makes developers ramp up quickly (shipping code increases confidence and knowledge)
- It actually makes rigor more feasible as the most effective rigorous processes are light weight and built-in.
Every line of code is a liability, the system that enables it to change rapidly is the asset.
Side note: every time I encounter JVM test startup lag I think someday I am going to die and will have spent time doing _this_.
For inspiration in this direction see Patrick Collison's great list: https://patrickcollison.com/fast
Another benefit of speed in this regard is that it lets you slow down a bit more and appreciate other things in life.
> Someone (Napoleon?) is credited with saying "quantity has a quality all its own"
Joe Stalin, I believe. It's a grim metaphor regarding the USSR's army tactics in WW2.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/795954-quantity-has-a-quali...
According to Wikiquotes, this is a common misattribution, and the first known record is Ruth M. Davis from 1978, who attributes it to Lenin: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Quantity