💩 "Code is, at best, only as crappy as what it's meant to represent."

"We're not here to translate specs into code, we're here to deliver working software."

The conclusion from these two sentences is simple: the day you're asked to implement a crappy feature or design, your job is to say "no"!

And then to challenge it until the outcome actually makes sense.

This is the concept of Jidoka: giving humans and machines the ability to stop the process to prevent defects from spreading down the production line. It's about building quality at the source and fixing problems where they appear, instead of patching their symptoms later.

There's nothing worse than doing the wrong thing really well. It's far better to invest your energy in doing the right thing - figuring out how to do it well comes second.

As engineers, our job is to understand the underlying business so we can build the right abstraction - which I personally find fascinating. And the keyword to get there is "why?". "Why do we need this?", "Why are we doing it that way?", "Why wouldn't it be better to represent it differently?".

So, practice (and even abuse) the two most powerful words in our craft: "why?" and "no!"