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Understanding Software

You're reading from   Understanding Software Max Kanat-Alexander on simplicity, coding, and how to suck less as a programmer

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Product type Paperback
Published in Sep 2017
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781788628815
Length 278 pages
Edition 1st Edition
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Author (1):
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Max Kanat-Alexander Max Kanat-Alexander
Author Profile Icon Max Kanat-Alexander
Max Kanat-Alexander
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Table of Contents (15) Chapters Close

1. Table of Contents FREE CHAPTER
2. Understanding Software
3. Credits
4. About the Author
5. www.PacktPub.com
6. Customer Feedback
7. Foreword
8. One. Principles for Programmers 9. Two. Software Complexity and its Causes 10. Three. Simplicity and Software Design 11. Four. Debugging 12. Five. Engineering in Teams 13. Six. Understanding Software 14. Seven. Suck Less 15. Index

Chapter 41. Instant Gratification = Instant Failure

The broadest problem that I see in the software industry is that companies are unwilling to engage in strategies that only show results in the long term. Or, more specifically, that organizations are unaware that there is any such thing as a long-term strategy.

In the US, it's probably a symptom of a general cultural problem – if an American can't see an instant result from something, they think it doesn't work. This leads to fast food, french fries, and obesity. The healthy way to eat (protein and vegetables) has a delayed effect on the body (you don't get the energy for over an hour), and the bad way to eat (endless carbohydrates without nutritional value) has an instant result – immediate energy.

Software is always a long-term process.

I wrote the first version of VCI (https://metacpan.org/pod/VCI), in about three weeks, and that was insanely fast. Any actual application (VCI is just a library...

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