TITLE: Doing It Wrong Fast AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: November 17, 2008 8:58 PM DESC: ----- BODY: Just this weekend I learned about Ashleigh Brilliant, a cartoonist and epigrammist. From little I've seen in a couple of days, his cartoons remind me of Hugh MacLeod's business-card doodles Gaping Void -- only with a 1930s graphic style and language that is more likely SFW. This Brilliant cartoon, #3053, made it into my Agile Development Hall of Fame on first sight: Doing it wrong fast... is at least better than doing it wrong slowly Doing it wrong fast means that we have a chance to learn sooner, and so have a chance to be less wrong than yesterday. This lesson was fresh in my mind over the weekend from a small dose of programming. I was working on the financial software I've decided to write for myself, which has me exploring a few corners of PLT Scheme that I don't use daily. As a result, I've been failing more frequently than usual. The best failures come rat-a-tat-tat, because they are often followed closely by an a-ha! Sunday, just before I learned of Brilliant's work, I felt one of those great releases when, for the first time, my code gave me an answer I did not already know and had not wanted to compute by hand: our family net worth. At that moment I was excited to verify the result manually (I'll need that test later!) and enjoy all the wrong wrong work that had brought me to this point. Brilliant has something. -----