Right Then Fast

Jan 28

Wanting to do something new is an excellent thing. It’s often worthy of admiration whether that means keeping a commitment or trying something new.

As the new year has rolled around, there have inevitably been a slew of new resolutions that people have made. They want to be healthier, they want to be slimmer, they want to be more productive. Whatever the case is, they are trying to be better than their old selves.

It’s made me think recently about two of the things that I do: programming working out (well a little anyways).

The thing that they have in common is that they need to be done right. What is right in a world of relative truths? Well, Reader, that is a good question. Right is correctness. It is the lack of error. It is proper form, and it is successful execution. It is, in fact, an absolute.

As people are trying to exercise and get healthy, they’re trying to do it as quickly as possible. And often people will burn themselves out with all of the effort that they’re putting in. Combined with a poor view (e.g., the goal is not to be skinny, it is to be healthy) and inadequate preparation, this is a recipe for disaster. By the time that February rolls around, most of the new year’s resolutions have fallen by the wayside.

There’s no use in trying to do 50 pushups as fast as you can if your form is incorrect. And there’s no use in trying to optimize a portion of code when the entire thing doesn’t work to begin with. Get back to the basics.

First do it right, then do it fast.

_{[Quality, Quantity Or A Fast Time On The Stopwatch - from the gym that brought you the cast of 300] [Optimization from a book that I use (Python in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition (In a Nutshell (O’Reilly)))]}