When I saw this title, I was sure I've seen a statement like that before. I looked it up, and true enough, Paul Graham wrote this in his essay "Design and Research":
"Indeed, there is even a saying among painters: 'A painting is never finished, you just stop working on it.' This idea will be familiar to anyone who has worked on software."
My boss was giving a retrospective on one of our projects, and included a slide that was headlined, "Design expands to fill all available time." He and our product manager got into an argument over whether that was really true or not, and various tweaks to the wording that would make it true if not. The argument ended when I pointed out that the fact that we'd been arguing over it for an hour was a pretty good indication that it was correct, and that the presentation was in five minutes so he better decide one way or another soon.
This is true of many artists, but certainly not all. I know of an artist that showed the same piece (a painting) in 4 shows at different stages of development, I kinda liked that, particularly as she was still putting paint in 5 minutes before the show I was at was to open.
Comments
When I saw this title, I was sure I've seen a statement like that before. I looked it up, and true enough, Paul Graham wrote this in his essay "Design and Research":
"Indeed, there is even a saying among painters: 'A painting is never finished, you just stop working on it.' This idea will be familiar to anyone who has worked on software."
My boss was giving a retrospective on one of our projects, and included a slide that was headlined, "Design expands to fill all available time." He and our product manager got into an argument over whether that was really true or not, and various tweaks to the wording that would make it true if not. The argument ended when I pointed out that the fact that we'd been arguing over it for an hour was a pretty good indication that it was correct, and that the presentation was in five minutes so he better decide one way or another soon.
>"Indeed, there is even a saying among painters:
This is true of many artists, but certainly not all. I know of an artist that showed the same piece (a painting) in 4 shows at different stages of development, I kinda liked that, particularly as she was still putting paint in 5 minutes before the show I was at was to open.
Musicians and recording engineers have the same saying.
s/painting/mix