Somewhere there must be written an engineering mantra that states something along the lines of “knowing that a thing can be done liberates the mind to do it”.
Is there a name for this “law” of software engineering?
-
What’s All This Then?
I'm Alex Russell, a web developer working on Chrome, Chrome Frame, and the broader web platform at Google. I'm guilty of many JavaScript transgressions.
My goal is to make the web suck less and to the extent that I can keep politics and economics from creeping in, that's what this blog is about.
Other facets available upon HTTP request: twitter, facebook, flickr, and quora. Expect much less self-restraint there.
-
Recent Comments
- CSS Vendor Prefixes! | folktrash on Vendor Prefixes Are A Rousing Success
- Vendor prefixes: the good, the bad and the ugly on Vendor Prefixes Are A Rousing Success
- Bruce Lawson’s personal site : Reading List on Vendor Prefixes Are A Rousing Success
- Justin on Vendor Prefixes Are A Rousing Success
- Mike Edward Moras (e-sushi™) on Vendor Prefixes Are A Rousing Success
- Mike Edward Moras (e-sushi™) on Things the W3C Should Stop Doing
- Yuguang Zhang on Google & the Future of JavaScript
- Sylvain Galineau on Vendor Prefixes Are A Rousing Success
- Yehuda Katz on Vendor Prefixes Are A Rousing Success
- Henri Sivonen on Vendor Prefixes Are A Rousing Success
7 Comments
How about the fast follower’s advantage?
Or Virgil’s Law (after the Roman poet)
Possunt quia posse videnture
“They can because they think they can.”
Just wanted to rephrase what you said a bit: knowing that a thing can be done liberates the body from doing it.
And I’ll name that the architect principle and call your’s the builder principle.
I prefer:
“If you don’t think it can be done, it can be done.”
OR
“Being told a thing cannot be done, liberates the mind to do it.”
I think the best word is “ego”. =p
Hey Jesse:
It’s funny you put it that way, mainly because I find that most of programming is about confidence. I can’t write any code that I’m not confident I can’t finish. This relationship generally has very little to do with whether or not I can either solve the problem or whether or not it’s even a good investment of time. Perhaps that’s ego, perhaps it’s just insecurity, but I’ve talked to other people who have much the same experience.
Or am I just weird?
No, I think that has to be a pretty common feeling. Maybe we are unique….
Isn’t that why we are all doing this? That same feeling you got writing your first “hello world” program – (no matter which language/archaic platform it was in ..i think for me it was IIe / pascal ibm ) …It felt soooooo good to make the big bad box that everyone thought was so complicated do your bidding
Nevermind, it appears to be some sort of built in junkie mentality instead.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/uosc-fk062006.php
One Trackback
[...] Alex Russell noted in his Doability post “knowing that a thing can be done liberates the mind to do it”. [...]