Embracing Chaos, part 1

Robby Russell — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:21:00 -0600

Consider this part one of several posts on my thoughts of the art of embracing chaos.

Don’t let the books fool you. The construction of custom software is an unmastered and volatile cesspool of chaos. I don’t adhere to the belief that there is a perfect methodology or process that will work for every project… as I’m sure many of you don’t.

Unlike bowling, you’ll never achieve a perfect score. Even in bowling, It’s unlikely that anybody will learn how to bowl a perfect score and do so on every game for the rest of their career.

You’ll never meet every expectation that a client has on every project.

You’ll never meet every expectation that a user has when they interact with your application.

Expectations are an interesting thing.

Your project might get widely adopted and embraced, but you’re still trying to control chaos.

It’s chaos. Pure chaos¹.

So, why do we bother? Why do we try so hard when the odds aren’t in our favor?

To be continued…

¹ Chaos Theory, Wikipedia

Robby on Rails: Tag control

Embracing Chaos, part 1