It’s been said that Vincent Van Gogh didn’t like _The Starry Night_, which is crazy, because it’s one of the world’s most recognizable paintings, and an obvious masterpiece.
If some of history’s greatest artists were unable to judge the value of their work accurately, how much less so are we. Don’t be quick to disparage your creative efforts, no matter how meager they may seem.
I read this quote in a completely non-software context last week, and it’s been rattling around in my brain ever since for its implications in numerous disciplines:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
I’ve had experiences where I’ve been trying to explain the benefits of automation to people whose job descriptions include large amounts of manual work. Or more significantly, managers whose bonuses are directly tied to the profit they can bring in via labor hours billed to the customer. Needless to say those explanations fell on deaf ears.
That’s just one example. I’m certain there are more.
I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that the system is working now. The bad news is that we have no idea why.
The above scenario plays out regularly in the life of a software developer, and it’s infuriating. In some sense it’s worse for a problem to disappear without warning than it is for the problem to persist, because without reproducibility it’s nearly impossible to determine the actual cause of the issue.
This happened to me after losing a big chunk of my Saturday night. Essentially the issue fixed itself after several retries. No idea at all as to why, but at least I could finally go to bed.