Weekly Reflection #35 - Two-way Doors
Each week, I share one insight. One piece of wisdom. One question to reflect on. (and a little Lagniappe)
Insight
It's well known in our industry that we should favor two-way doors, which are cheap to experiment with, over one-way doors that demand slow deliberation. While true, over time all that optionality can bite us when we try to undo several layers of two-way doors at once. Reversibility itself has a hidden cost. The best way to treat a two-way door is to reverse quickly when a choice turns out to be bad, and once you've verified it's a good one, move on as if it were a one-way door.
Wisdom
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
William James, The Principles of Psychology
Reflection
What are you keeping open that you should have closed by now?
Lagniappe
- I recently found this proposal for an agent behavior spec, a standard format for describing how an agent is expected to behave across repeated interactions. It has me thinking about evals and behavior descriptions.
- This week on Book Overflow, we continue our discussion of We, Programmers by Robert Martin. This is Part 2.
- As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Reply and let me know what resonates.