49 lines
3.2 KiB
Markdown
49 lines
3.2 KiB
Markdown
# Quick and Dirty vs. Polished and Perfect: The Two Sides of Engineering
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- **期号**: SRE Weekly Issue #431（2024-06-30）
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- **作者**: Juraj Masar — BetterStack
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- **链接**: https://betterstack.com/community/blog/two-sides/
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## 简介
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To me, this concept comes up over and over in SRE, and it’s a core part of SLOs.
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## 正文
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Originally posted on the [Early-stage Startup Engineering](https://juraj.blog/p/two-sides) blog by Juraj Masar, Co-founder & CEO at [Better Stack](https://betterstack.com/?utm_content=callout&utm_medium=blog-community&utm_source=community&utm_term=two-sides).
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# Quick and Dirty vs. Polished and Perfect: The Two Sides of Engineering
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**Every great engineer knows how to toggle between two fundamentally different, yet equally important styles of work: "Let's wing it" hacking and corporate-level "measure twice, cut once" engineering.**
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As more people hop onto the software engineering bandwagon just for the paycheck and lifestyle perks rather than a true-bread love for technology, certain contrasts between the "tech virtuosos" and the "clock punchers" start to stand out.
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One such distinction is knowing when to flip the switch between the two engineering approaches.
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Here's the scoop: **Traditional paths like universities, internships, and work experiences at mega-tech companies usually only teach engineers the ways of "polished and perfect engineering".**
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1. Don't mess things up!
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2. You have to be a team player. Stick to a common code style, whip up unit tests, and give your code some good documentation.
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3. Your code should be a breeze to maintain and enhance.
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4. Long-winded commits and pull request messages? Bring 'em on.
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**But if programming is your hobby, chances are, you love playing around with the latest tech.** You might find yourself churning out 50-100 line scripts just to test that shiny new API. Or maybe to scrape a list of rentals to snag the perfect apartment... or score the best car deal.
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These are throwaway scripts that probably won't see the light of day again.
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**That's why many self-taught coding enthusiasts often resort to a patchwork approach to make things work... and fast.**
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**There's a common misbelief that the "polished and perfect" style of engineering is always superior. But it's not.** Tests for code that's gonna gather dust in some corner are just a waste of your time. Staging environments for pre-release software? That’s ridiculous.
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If you're an engineer at an early-stage startup, being able to prototype is a golden skill.
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**What really sinks startups isn't ugly code.** It's the failure to create something people are willing to pay for. That's why being able to prototype quickly, especially in the early stages, is super important.
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**The crème de la crème of engineers can do both:** whip up quick and dirty prototypes, validate their concepts at breakneck speed, and then spin those ideas into top-notch production code.
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[Let us know](mailto:hello@betterstack.com?subject=Suggestion%20for%20Quick%20and%20Dirty%20vs.%20Polished%20and%20Perfect%3A%20The%20Two%20Sides%20of%20Engineering&body=)
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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