10:01 AM |
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Yesterday at the discussion with my mentor Saptarshi, he mentioned a really nice phrase called "Story of the Floss" I studied more about it. Its a really great phrase and can learn lots of thing from it.
Simply it means: Keep it simple, Build an End to End solution,
Most importantly take action(code) without thinking/talking too much and adding more
and more fancy ideas into the problem.
Here's the related story. (Reference:
https://wiki.openmrs.org/display/RES/The+Story+of+the+Floss)
Clem and another group are faced with the same challenge: build a bridge across a canyon.
The other group — like most of us would — gathers engineers, draws up
specifications, and begins planning on how the bridge should be
constructed properly. Meanwhile, Clem pulls a box of dental floss out
of his pocket, unwinds it, and throws it across the canyon. Almost
immediately, he's got something across the canyon. It's only floss, but
it's there — end to end.
The other group is arguing about whether the bridge should be a beam,
suspension, truss, or arch bridge. Clem starts layering paper mâché
onto the floss.
The other group has finally decided on a suspension bridge and begins
preparing the materials according to specifications. Clem has people
walking across his paper mâché bridge.
The other group realizes that they would probably be better off with a
truss bridge, begins discussions on the new specifications, and then
realizes that they are too far over budget and the project is shut
down. Clem has people driving across his bridge.
The other group finally creates their version of the bridge, only to
realize it doesn't reach over to the other side where they initially
intended it to!
The Lesson
Whenever possible, start with the floss. See the solution through
end-to-end, since this is often the best way to understand the problem
and often informs the next pass at the solution. In the end, it is rare
that we fully understand the problem until the third iteration of the
solution.
Be agile, open to corrections, and iterate on your solutions. But, most importantly, take action.
My Thoughts
In my words the lesson of this story is dont try to be so smart and keep expanding the idea of your project. Just start simply from sctratch and add lil by lil, But the goal should be to develop an end to end solution (that means a product which is something useful and usable in a practical scenario.) After getting accomplish the basic goals of the project you can proceed into your other fancy ideas. Note that those fancy ideas could take a longer time to develop (or might get failed) but if you have followed the floss way, you still have a basic product which is really a usable one!
Actually I think this phrase isn't only related to the open source software development, This is a truly awesome phrase which we can adopt in our life in general!
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