The discoveries you make in the making Style is an expression of the interest you take in the making of every sentence. It emerges, almost without intent, from your engagement with each sentence. It's the discoveries you make in the making of the prose itself. Where ambiguity rules, there is no "style"—or anything else worth having. Pursue clarity instead. In the pursuit of clarity, style reveals itself. Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing The idea grows as they workFour principlesExpressing ideas helps to form them styleclaritymaking
Simple moments of clarity I have seen autistic children drawing at a terrific speed and I've always thought that my drawings should not be less rapid, because that speed gives them insignificance. In this speed lies their abandonment and it may cause them to be overlooked as mere doodles. However, I understand that they are like that pristine light that appears when they tell you that you have a tumour. In an instant, everything becomes clear and well-defined. All contours are cruelly illuminated as if it was worth taking a final look at the world. At such times, although the lines in the drawings clump into a skein of events that are indecipherable to ordinary mortals, they can be described in detail by the victim one by one. These are moments when weeds regain their nature as plants. Only now can I understand these drawings as simple moments of clarity. Smiljan Radić, Death at Home artclarity
Pellucidity A Definition www.thefreedictionary.com Free from obscurity and easy to understand; the comprehensibility of clear expression euphonyunderstandingthinkingclarity
Agile as Trauma An Essay by Dorian Taylor doriantaylor.com The Agile Manifesto is an immune response on the part of programmers to bad management. Many a corner officeIntramural brownie pointsFeature factories agilemanagement
Many a corner office I want you to consider instead the possibility that Waterfall came to exist, and continues to exist, for the convenience of managers: people whose methods are inherited from military and civil engineering, and who, more than anything else, need you to promise them something specific, and then deliver exactly what you promised them, when you promised you’d deliver it. There exists many a corner office whose occupant, if forced to choose, will take an absence of surprises over a substantive outcome. surpriseplanning
Intramural brownie points Features don’t work, in the sense that they can be easily gamed. A brittle and perfunctory implementation, done quickly, is going to score more intramural brownie points over a robust and complete one. If the question is "does product A have feature X?" then the answer is yes either way. features
Feature factories We use the term feature factory as a pejorative to designate companies addicted to adding features, while accumulating incalculable so-called technical debt. This situation is driven by management for the convenience of marketing, and I am skeptical that a more faithful application of Agile principles will correct it. Indeed, I suspect Agile processes are constitutionally vulnerable to this kind of compromise. The presence of a feature can only indicate to a user if a goal is possible, behavior will determine how painful it will be to achieve it. ux