Skip to content

Comment on Planning is overrated. The best performers seesaw between ideas and actions.parent

Comments

I'm just trying to emphasize that actual experience is much more important than any amount of planing.

Moreover, planning if it was about top-down time-scheduling is useless, because you cannot foresee anything.

What most programmers do - it is like a planning an expedition without any experience using lonely-planet and internet for estimations - just a wasting of a time.

No amount of planning can replace your own personal experience, but with a lot of experience you don't need planing - you're just doing.

Not trying to be an asshole here, but love pushing logic.

I would definitely agree that the importance of experience can never be emphasized enough. The more the better, always.

But, even if one were to over simplify this, at the least, it is a trifecta of experience, planning and the complexity/scope of the task/goal.

If one were doing what the facebook team did at the start, a bunch of friends, coding non stop for days on end, bringing in formal planning would be the most idiotic thing. (but if one were to be anal about it, even that takes some ad-hoc, seat of the pants planning - what features to have, what algorithms to develop, blablabla)

But for the same facebook to keep growing at 500 mil users +, providing increased features (not to mention, deciding what features to provide in the short, mid or long term) while employing geographically distributed teams, it is impossible to go without planning. Make note, I mention 'planning' not 'plans'.

The same goes with what a team of one is trying to accomplish, depending on the complexity and scope of the goal with respect to that person's relative experience.

As Eiserhower said, "plans are useless, but planning indispensable" (or something like that). I can go on explaining why those words are so meaningful, but that did be a monologue and I am trying to get out of that habit :)

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.