Code Soloist #10: Fight process, not principles

Because we play in a digital world, developers tend to have an over-inflated sense of spoon bendability: we believe that because we build inside this world, it means we’re creating it, when in reality our creations are still bound by most of the same laws as our bodies are.

When we create, we must obey the constraints of time and money, or more generally, our own energy. You cannot fight against principles and win. When I told you to play your game, I meant it. I didn’t mean you could nod in agreement while continuing to conjure up your epic idea that is too much for one person to realize.

The Work Energy Principle states that “the work of a force is equal to the change in energy that it produces in the object on which it acts”. You, the force, have a finite energy, and your job is to compell your project to produce its own energy, or success; to the degree that you succeed, that is how work progresses.

As a code soloist, there is no way that you can circumvent the laws of mechanics and use a spark to power a collider. Thanks to the principle of momentum, you will never get off the ground. It is not a simple matter of time and effort: this thing you are creating, digitally speaking, has real mass.

What you can rally against is process. Your own process. How much you produce and when you produce it. How much you waste. You can treat a fight against process as a creative experiment. You can treat it like a game, and it’s a game you can win. But the second you start wishing your beach ball was a boulder, you’re going to drop it.

Code Soloist is for single-person software development companies that are trying to start something big with their bare hands. In it, I try to impart whatever I’ve learned, for better or worse, doing the same thing badly.


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  1. danielcrenna posted this

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