in reply to Maxims for Programmers

I say this a lot, but sadly, few co-workers "get it":

It's better to get the right answer slowly than the wrong answer quickly.
Anyone who's ever optimized correctness away knows what I'm talking about. ;-)

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Re: Re: Maxims for Programmers
by dsheroh (Monsignor) on May 19, 2002 at 07:39 UTC
    That's a rather controversial statement these days... ("Worse is better", etc.)

    Personally, I agree with you in theory. However, in practice, a shoddy but shipping product today is better than a perfectly-designed and implemented product that is only half done when your funding runs dry.

    (Rereading your wording, I suspect that you may mean "answer" as in "the output of a program", rather than the program itself, but even then a 90% solution may be adequate, provided that it's smart enough to tell you when it can't work out the correct result.)

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