The NTP Classic devs fell into investing increasing effort merely fighting the friction of their own limiting assumptions because they lacked something that Dave Mills had and I have and any systems architect necessarily must have – professional courage. It’s the same quality that a surgeon needs to cut into a patient – the confidence, bordering on arrogance, that you do have what it takes to go in and solve the problem even if there’s bound to be blood on the floor before you’re done.
It’s good that most people don’t have such arrogance, because it would be unjustified. Don’t strive for confidence, strive for calibration. And demand it from your system architect as you would from your heart surgeon.
I think there’s an underlying truth that most software engineers are too timid, perhaps because we’re calibrated for working with materials where mistakes are more costly and harder to put right.
ESR
It’s good that most people don’t have such arrogance, because it would be unjustified. Don’t strive for confidence, strive for calibration. And demand it from your system architect as you would from your heart surgeon.
I think there’s an underlying truth that most software engineers are too timid, perhaps because we’re calibrated for working with materials where mistakes are more costly and harder to put right.