Comment by jalev
1 day ago
It's wild we're seeing people rediscover the same solution to the same problems we've had forever: being precious about your darlings.
Code generators reduced the friction for implementing every shitty idea someone has ever had, but because developers seem to have never experienced throwing shitty ideas away (because if it was written in code it _has_ to be important right?) they treat everything coming out of the Codegen as a precious idea that eventually builds up to clutter one's brain leading to Implementation Fatigue the author experienced. The solution? Go through that same process but focus on one idea at a time and make it good.
It does make me wonder if the people experiencing this had hobbies outside of software engineering (let's say, anything creative) they'd be able to spot the signs earlier.
Funny. In writing, the advice is to "kill your darlings". Don't let a particular paragraph that you love a lot stop the whole story because it doesnt fit.
I think that's still the same idea. In his example the darling would be the entire project, in your example it's the paragraph.
Advocating for killing a single paragraph for the sake of the book is like abandoning a single feature for the sake of the project, which is his central point.
The only difference is if you're referring to the darling as the whole or as one paragraph/feature