In life, including working life “slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/01/26
I’ve been agile all my (not just programming) life, and only figured out this century that there is a vocabulary for that, containing the words agile, extreme programming, feature-driven and many more.
Now with the passing of the years, I also realise I have been trying to do “slow and smooth” all my life, and that with age (and less adrenaline) this becomes easier and easier.
I think “slow and smooth” goes well with “agile”, specially when you keep the focus on “doing things right” (and trying to do them right the first time, and keeping it right in incremental steps).
It often reminds me of the Dutch phrase “heeft u haast, gaat dan zitten” which often is attributed to be part of the many Chinese proverbs. It roughly translates to “when in a hurry, take a seat”, and suggests to take a step back and think when under pressure. Maybe this English version of a Chinese proverb comes close: “When you are in a hurry, the horse holds back”.
For is it is intriguing that mainly Chinese, but in a broader sense Asian, proverbs play such an important role, whereas Western proverbs get less and less important. Informal knowledge seems to diminish in Western culture, which I think is a pity.
Maybe all these vocabulary things that started to make sense way after my puberty also have to do with being diagnosed autistic at 50. That too started a lot of puzzle-pieces to suddenly make sense.
Below the links that inspired me to make this blog post in the first place:
- [Wayback/Archive.is] Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast | by Michael Fisher | Medium
- [Archive.is] 🔎Julia Evans🔍 on Twitter: “i’m slowly working on a zine called “understand your bugs” about slowing down when debugging and understanding what’s going on before jumping to a fix. But I’ve heard from some folks that they feel pressure to fix bugs As Fast As Possible. Do you feel that? How do you handle it?”
–jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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