|
There's a section of my yard where not much grows. We tried to get turf grass to grow for years. Wasted a ton of time, money, and resources on seeds, water, fertilizer and so on. But it's too shady, the soil is too sandy and rocky, and the pines and oaks make it too acidic. So this summer, we started converting it into an enchanted woodland garden. (This is about web development. I promise.) Building a garden…We dug out a walking path, and filled it with crushed gravel. We relocated a bunch of heavy, beautiful rocks from where the developers buried them into the garden. We purchased wildflower seeds and sowed them over the bare patches. We foraged ferns from the woods behind our house, and planted those, too. Early in the process, I was really concerned "getting it right" on the first pass. What if we plant some flowers in area we decide should be a footpath? What if I put this giant rock here, but the flowers hide it from view in a few years once they fill in? But that's the nature of gardening. It's a continual process of starting with something small and functional, letting it grow on its own terms, and adjusting over time. In a few years, I'll likely need to move some rocks, remove or add some plants, and clean up the path. Code is like that, too…One of the biggest pitfalls I see my students fall into is trying to plan for use cases that don't exist yet—and might not ever happen. This is an industry-wide problem. We use absurdly complex tools to future-proof "for scale" that may never come, because we fear the dreaded refactor. And then what happens? A few years later—before we've ever reached any sort of scale that would require using those complex tools—we refactor anyways, because the design or customer needs change. Code changes over time. Or it remains as-is, working just fine. Either way, don't plan today's code around tomorrow's imagined needs, because coding is like gardening. Cheers, Want to share this with others or read it later? View it in a browser. |
0 Komentar untuk "[Go Make Things] Gardening and code"