'The Good Enough Trap' (ian-leslie.com) 80
An anonymous reader shares an essay: Software designers refer to "the good enough principle." It means, simply put, that sometimes you should prioritise functionality over perfection. As a relentless imperfectionist, I'm inclined to embrace this idea. I gave this newsletter its name to encourage myself to post rough versions of my pieces rather than not to write them at all. When it comes to parenting, I'm a Winnicottian: I believe you shouldn't try to be the perfect mum or dad because there's no such thing. At work and in life, it's often true that the optimal strategy is not to strive for the optimal result, but to aim for what works and hope for the best.
The good enough can be a staging post to the perfect. The iPhone's camera was a "good enough" substitute for a compact camera. It did the job, but it wasn't as good as a Kodak or a Fuji. Until it was. Technological innovation often works like this, but the improvement curve isn't always as steep as with the smartphone camera. Sometimes we allow ourselves to get stuck with a product which is good enough to displace the competition, without fulfilling the same range of needs. The psychological and social ramifications can be profound.
Let's say you're a student and you use ChatGPT to write your essays for you. Give it the right prompts and it will produce pieces that are good enough to get the grade you need. That seems like a win: it saves you time and effort, presuming your tutors don't notice or don't care. Maybe you get through the whole of university this way. But be wary of this equilibrium. Over the longer term, you will be stunting the growth of your own mind. The struggle of turning inchoate thought into readable sentences and paragraphs is a powerful exercise for the brain. It's how you get better at thinking. It is thinking.
The good enough can be a staging post to the perfect. The iPhone's camera was a "good enough" substitute for a compact camera. It did the job, but it wasn't as good as a Kodak or a Fuji. Until it was. Technological innovation often works like this, but the improvement curve isn't always as steep as with the smartphone camera. Sometimes we allow ourselves to get stuck with a product which is good enough to displace the competition, without fulfilling the same range of needs. The psychological and social ramifications can be profound.
Let's say you're a student and you use ChatGPT to write your essays for you. Give it the right prompts and it will produce pieces that are good enough to get the grade you need. That seems like a win: it saves you time and effort, presuming your tutors don't notice or don't care. Maybe you get through the whole of university this way. But be wary of this equilibrium. Over the longer term, you will be stunting the growth of your own mind. The struggle of turning inchoate thought into readable sentences and paragraphs is a powerful exercise for the brain. It's how you get better at thinking. It is thinking.
Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
I think everyone still on this site; understands this quite well
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For me it's the Final Fantasy II trap.
As a kid, my first run through Final Fantasy II, I had gotten like halfway through when I hit a fairly difficult area, and I was getting tired of the fights, so rather than spending time leveling up and whatnot before going there, I just increasingly started making a habit of running away from enemies. And it worked great, I got further and further and further, really quickly. But my level correspondingly fell further and further behind what it should have been for th
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But then you get cases like windows. Where XP was good, vista was vista, 7 was good enough. But then we went downhill. It worked, but we can't have good enough, we have to "move forward" even if what you have at hand is good enough.
Sometimes there is a right answer and a wrong answer. Sometimes there is a bad point with every good one, and the goal is a balance of good bad... A "good enough".
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Wow, the perseverance with which people keep beating this so-dead-it-turned-into-a-fossil horse is amazing.
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The success of Microsoft itself was a case of "good enough". At the time everyone was trying to create the perfect operating system, the perfect office suite, the perfect database management system. Gates realized that "good enough" really was good enough for the majority of customers out there, who needed something with basic functionality that was priced reasonably, and that they needed it now. MSDOS, then Office, then Windows, then SQL Server, were all cobbled together and full of kluges, but they wor
Re: Slashdot (Score:2)
Every Day Someone Discovers the Pareto Principle (Score:1)
80/20 [wikipedia.org]. Doing 20% of the effort twice gets the same result as doing 96% of the effort once. But this needs you to not stop at 80%. It's not "good enough", just "good enough for now". And cheating is still cheating, not giving 20%.
Re:Every Day Someone Discovers the Pareto Principl (Score:5, Insightful)
After a while, you learn that philosophy only works for some things. Doesn't apply to, say, open-heart surgery.
The real value comes in knowing when "good enough" is indeed good enough versus when more work is actually necessary.
Re:Every Day Someone Discovers the Pareto Principl (Score:4, Interesting)
You should always go for "good", because that typically means "good value for money" and typically does not include short-term "solutions" causing long-term problems. "Good enough" is the same as "good" if done right, i.e. when looking at all angles. But fake "good enough", were typically long(er)-term effects and often also risks and side-effects are ignored, is actually not "good enough" and not "good" either.
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I just realized that I sort of implicitly assumed that "good enough" implied "good" as a minimum baseline (as opposed to "perfect"), but I agree with you: it's worth making it explicit that anything less than "good" is likely not good enough.
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Indeed. I think for some reason faking "good enough" is often a lot easier than faking "good". Maybe the additional step from "good enough" to "good" already overloads the average person's fact checking ability.
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It is even simpler than all of that: Good enough means that all necessary factors are dealt with even if it is less than ideal from a "perfect" standpoint.
Anything less is not "good enough' despite people constantly pushing this idea from laziness.
Distribution of work (Score:2)
Pareto covers a lot of ground, including work.
The rule of thumb is that 20% of your effort goes into accomplishing 80% of the task, and the remaining 20% of the task requires the last 80% of the effort.
I could see this feasibly applying to surgery, where 20% of your time is doing the easy stuff, and the remaining 80% of your time is doing the more intricate work.
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I think you have those numbers wrong.
It's 80% of the effort for the first 80% of the task and another 80% of the effort for the remaining 20%.
Good enough ... (Score:3)
I pay for grammar and spell-checking and use ChatGPT to remix my essays for eloquence. That comes at a cost. I am lazy-brained and helpless without the crutches. Mostly, I don't care because I write for pleasure and I don't owe anyone 100% unaided efforts. So, I do see your point.
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I pay for grammar and spell-checking and use ChatGPT to remix my essays for eloquence.
Well, you use ChatGPT, at any rate. I doubt it does a good job with eloquence. Every output I've seen from it is this same kind of bland sunny positive mush, which loses my interest really fast.
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For eloquence? ChatGPT does a kind of bland average prose, not eloquence.
I suppose that depends on what CaptainDork's own prose is like. If it's bad enough, "bland average" could be quite eloquent by comparison.
Good Enough For Government Work (Score:2, Troll)
This mantra has lived so long it is now a way of life.
But, hey, it's all weeds fault. Right?
Perfect is not wanted (Score:5, Interesting)
Almost no-one is willing to pay the extra to have the perfect thing.
They will complain it's not perfect, but they will put up with the mediocre they're willing to pay for and eventually become used to it.
Just like giving up their privacy and subject to advertising because the email or the social media or games are free.
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That is also not really the question. The question is "good enough" vs. "good". "Good enough" will often be done in the stupid way. i.e. with short-term thinking only. That way you accumulate technological (and other) debt. If you do not clean that up pretty fast, you end up with a house of cards that will eventually collapse. On the other hand "good" typically does not have that problem. Hence selecting "good" (when you can get it) actually solves problems long-term and not only for a limited time making t
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This exactly. I always use "good enough" as an admission of defeat. Like a limitation in a library we couldn't figure out how to work around in time for ship, so we used a kludge. "good enough" on any team where I have any pull implies a follow-up issue is already logged. (Whether the PM ever let's you actually address it is another matter).
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Technical debt may also have far more impact than just "your company". That said, what you want is "good". Nil-wit managers are pretty good at convincing themselves that fake "good enough" is "good", but they are far less good at doing that for something that is not actually good and the evaluation is direct.
Aiming for "perfect", on the other hand, is just stupid. Doing that is an instance of the Nirvana fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy).
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The 14th Gen Intel Core i9 CPUs seem to be endgame for the traditional x86 architecture with regards to personal use. There are reports of invalid motherboard configurations resulting in CPU degradation, which implies that overclocking "K" series CPUs is a lost art.
The future of CISC technology seems to be more in line with SQL. Describe the final result, and let the CPU figure out the optimal path to achieving the desired
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Not really. The space shuttle software couldn't handle year changes, for example, which meant no space missions could be done near the end of the year.
Is that software "good"? I'd ar
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Not really. The space shuttle software couldn't handle year changes, for example, which meant no space missions could be done near the end of the year.
Close. The shuttle software probably could have handled the year change, but without testing nobody would guarantee that there couldn't be a problem, and caution said it was easier to just not fly missions at the end of the year. (The software recorded time as year/day of year). Covered in an eighteen year old slashdot story [slashdot.org]-- wow.
But the software finally did get updated to cover year rollover: http://web.archive.org/web/200... [archive.org]
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John Glenn told a reporter that his last thought before they lit the booster under him for his first flight was, "I wish this thing hadn't been built by the lowest bidder." Turned out to be "good enough".
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The reverse is true in the performance arts. It is quite expensive to see live talent because audio/visual recordings are so inexpensive and actually more than "good enough". All but the top-tier performance venues have been driven out of business. I started playing professionally several decades ago when it was expected that every neighborhood watering hole would feature a live band on the weekends, if not a live show. No more. Now you don't even need a DJ to draw a crowd.
The upshot of all this contraction
Re:Perfect is not wanted (Score:4, Funny)
not *unusual* [to be playing...] Really, slashdot? No edit feature? In 2024?
Why do we need an editing feature? (Score:2)
The current software for posting is Good Enough...
we are cost driven (Score:3)
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Sad but true. All most people care about is cost, not cost in relation to quality. And hence they buy crap.
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Sad but true. All most people care about is cost, not cost in relation to quality. And hence they buy crap.
When the quality of the application is not improved with the higher quality of the product, "good enough" is good enough.
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When special, unusual circumstances are met, special, unusual circumstances are met. You have no point.
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When special, unusual circumstances are met, special, unusual circumstances are met. You have no point.
And when good enough is good enough, there's no point in paying more for better than you need.
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Sad but true. All most people care about is cost, not cost in relation to quality. And hence they buy crap.
Cost vs. quality is a calculation, like any other. Everything isn't binary ("quality" vs. "crap").
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The SLR and now mirrorless were never in the running in the first place. People didn't replace those cameras with cellphones. People replaced cheap and midrange point and shoot cameras.
Big cameras were never going to be anything other than a pro and niche consumer item because, and I say this as someone who has one, they are a bulky pain in the arse to carry round.
Also SACD was only useful for people who wanted surround sound which isn't even available for most recordings. And few people ever had the kit.
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SACD/AudioDVD/even CD lost to MP3,
Bulky and inconvenient lost to compactness and ease of use.
SLR/DSLR with 1.4 lens lost to cellphone.
Bulky and inconvenient lost to compactness and ease of use. Hmmm, I'm starting to repeat myself...
It is not about good enough but about cheaper product that leads mass adoption.
It seems that people are ready to make sacrifices for getting rid of that pain up their ass.
Sadly we no longer care about quality but about affordability
Sounds like something an audiophile would say.
look at architecture from Art Deco to white wall.
Considering the prices that the Onement paintings fetched in auctions, I would say affordability has nothing to do with the color palette or the complexity of line pattern.
"It is thinking". No, not always. (Score:3)
For humans with limited memory, it is. For AI of the LLM variant, with much larger memory, it is not. It is just using statistical correlations without any insight or understanding. That needs to be understood, or people will think that LLMs can do things they decidedly cannot do.
We can only have good enough (Score:2)
Even the summaries example of using ChatGPT that wasn't good enough, it was cheating and bypasses the essence of what I think you should go to University for and that is to learn. Getting ChatGPT to do it for you isn't good enough at all not even close. Striving for perfection would be insisting that every student gets 100% with the most pedantic of marking or fails, and that would be ludicrous, especially in something as subjective as writing an essay. It would be just a waste of everyone's time.
Functionality, or bugs? (Score:2)
Is "good enough" measured by functionality? Is shipping with some number of known bugs "good enough?" To me this is the really hard decision. I've always striven for "no bugs", but on real systems some bugs are sufficiently 'low risk' (probability x consequences) that documenting them allows the user to make an informed decision. To me, though, tossing something over the fence with known defects and no warning crosses the line into "never good enough."
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Bugs can vary in intensity, plenty of them can be edge cases that no real user will experience or be significantly affected by. For example recently I had a bug that the tail on the "g" wasn't being rendered properly. Should we delay the release for that? What I have noticed is when you start making a reliable product the testers don't report less bugs what they do is start reporting more trivial bugs, or start making suggestions on improvements as bugs.
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What I have noticed is when you start making a reliable product the testers don't report less bugs what they do is start reporting more trivial bugs, or start making suggestions on improvements as bugs.
Yup; that's where the classic "leave an obvious, trivial bug there for QA to find" bit comes from.
The QA person finds it and reports it, they feel good, you fix it easy. And they don't waste everybody's time "finding" nitipicky subjective BS.
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Good enough is about meeting the business requirement. Not building something that meets the maybe future requirements.
Good enough still needs the bugs worked out before release.
Since there isn't un-needed extra functionality the validation surface area is less.
Perfectionism is the opposite of perfection (Score:5, Insightful)
Perfectionism is when someone is so paralyzed by the thought of "failure" that they fail to accomplish anything. Having high standards is great; having impossible standards is horrible.
The problem is that the OP is looking at it wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The goal of the paper is not to get a good grade on the paper.
The goal of the paper is the knowledge that you gain by researching and writing it yourself.
In that case "good enough" might actually be good enough, because you learned something.
That's a really bad example (Score:3)
Most education facility today is pretty good at stunting the growth of your mind, no aid from ChatGPT required.
Polishing your old timer car (Score:3)
It had to be polished thoroughly and somehow you spend hours and hours trying to get the perfect shine,
not noticing that everyone around you already moved on to a better, faster and more modern car.
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Dude, have you seen the market prices for old cars lately?
Assuming nobody wants to buy your car, though, nobody cares what kind of car you drive or how polished it is. Image is all in your head.
iphones camera?? (Score:2)
Did the author just dead#ss forget about camera phones for 5 years prior?
Granted okay the 808 had a camera over 10 years ago thats better than most phones on market now still so good enough is good enough but also modern good enough is better than a pocket camera from 15 years ago.
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Did the author just dead#ss forget about camera phones for 5 years prior?
Apple invented apps, mobile internet, touch screens, phones, sex and music.
not good enough (Score:2)
It's not that some component is "good enough", it's that attention to some other component is a better use of resources
Overall the rate of improvement to the system remains at least the same
Bad punctuation in the title (Score:2)
Good enough... (Score:1)
There's another related concept in business; it's called "minimum viable product." Seems to be what US companies specialise in. They even had China emulating it, at least for the US market. China has since shown it can do much better when you ask. Yurp has always been at the higher-quality end of making stuff too.
What the hell... (Score:2)
The actual referenced article is about something completely different. Whoever reposted this on Slashdot did so without going through any trouble of reading and understanding what the article is about. The editor simply copy pasted a random block of text which doesn't in any way reflect the quintessence of the original essay. What the f.. Slashdot!
The problem with good enough (Score:2)
The problem with good enough is that when things fall short due to budget, mgmt, whatever .. you have failed to be good enough and thus failed.
The goal should always be better than good enough and good enough should be the bare minimum.
"The Perfection Trap" (Score:1)
As a counter point: the opposite is also true.
Striving for perfection can also be a trap i.e. diminshing returns to go from "good enough" to "this is perfect" can sometimes not be worth it.
To use a similar example to the essay: a student writing an essay (but having to juggle their workload) i.e. a student with an essay due in three weeks but also got another essay due in four weeks. Do you spend three weeks trying to "perfect" the first essay, and then only spend a single week for the second essay? (No, un
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Perfectionism is far worse than 'good enough'. You define your project requirements and 'good enough' is meeting them. Perfectionism is endlessly going beyond scope and never delivering.
The calculator analogy prevails (Score:4, Interesting)
Chatgpt will be exactly the same. Some will use it as a tool. Some will use it as a crutch.
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Calculators generally give you accurate results.
Good enough today is not enough (Score:1)
Good enough if fine is long as the good enough today doesn't become an undocumented, un-upgradable rats nest later. Some systems can handle it and some can't.
How is this "good enough"? (Score:3)
Let's say you're a student and you use ChatGPT to write your essays for you.
You aren't getting anything out of those ChatGPT essays. No practice writing, organizing your thoughts, doing research. You'll get a passing grade and a diploma. But in most jobs, your education credentials only get you in the door. In a few months, it will become evident that you don't have the requisite skill set. And then you won't have a job. Or worse yet, you'll be assigned some clerical b.s. duties and forever be labeled a fuck-up. With a salary to match.
Why don't you just go to the gym and use a chain hoist to lift that bar?
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Good Enough is back is it? (Score:2)
Haven't seen this in a long while.
About 20 years ago Good Enough IT was a thing. It was in flavor at about the same time Agile started it's big upswing in IT.
Good enough IT has always been a directive in my work. I interpret it as this.
- Delivered functionality meets the business need.
- Delivered functionality is designed and built such that it does not overtly block future iterations.
- Delivered does not hide or fake or stub out important internal capabilities that could give rise to obvious bugs in near
horrible but good enough (Score:2)
It seems there is nothing horrible enough to make you consider alternatives?
Talk about low standards.
Good enough is normally fine (Score:2)
In development that you don't optimize unless you need to and something that works is better than something that doesn't. That doesn't mean you write terrible unmaintainable code, or outside of requirements - you are still expected to use common sense for data structures, memory efficiency and whatnot. But just get it going and you might find it's quite sufficient. If needs be then you can go back in and focus on performance tuning it.
Good enough for what? (Score:2)
Meh. good enough (Score:2)