The Good Enough Software Engineer

Don’t waste time on things that no one uses, or wants to use

Photo by Ralf Knüfer on Unsplash (Those poor, unwanted boats)

In my limited time working in software , I’ve realized that taking a step back is usually more useful than coding up an algorithm. These days you can just use ChatGPT or Claude for those algorithm problems, so people who work with software should be used for something more, right?

One thing that we as people (currently) have over these LLMs are our value judgments, i.e. that someone will use the code we‘re writing, and that the code is good enough to accomplish whatever it is the person will use it for.

In other words: “we’re doing something of value, and it’s good enough”.

Let’s look at some ways failing to step back can go wrong.

Don’t Build the Metaverse

Let’s blow things up to the business level and put down the keyboard for a minute. Let’s take Mark Zuckerburg’s white whale, the Metaverse.

What problem does the Metaverse solve? What customers does it draw in? How good is good enough?

The answer to these questions, from my perspective, is:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But the market has spoken so far.