Chronological Development

2024-04-07

Tags: chronological, development, perfectionism, generalization

I think my brain tends to over-generalize. I also want to be a perfectionist but I am too incompetent to reach perfection. How can I remedy this?

I think I should develop my hobby-projects in a chronological order. Meaning that I should form a vision of what I want to get done, and start implementing the stuff that the user sees first.

This is in contrast to what I usually do - develop the things I think are most “important” first. Whatever that means. When I develop important stuff it needs to be done right so I start to ponder about some situational use-cases that might show up later and plan the code accordingly. Into the rabbit hole I go. Those rockstar 100x devs might rock on like this. I don’t. I crumble.

I am the rabbit

Anyway, so I should develop in chronological order instead. I call this Chronological Development. Implement the first things that the user encounters first, first:

1. Open a window (this is the first the the user sees)
2. Render a logo (this is the second thing the user sees)
3. Create a menu system with a “new”-button (this is the third thing the user sees, and is the main user flow)
4. Select a team-composition (this is the fourth thing that the user sees)
5. Spawn into battle-mode (this is the fifth thing that the user sees)
6. etcetc

Code the minimal amount of code that satisfies a user journey. Ask “Do I need this right now to implement this user flow?” instead of “May I need this later?”. YAGNI.