Asymptotic Perfection

Posted by: Josh Walsh in Agile.

Remember way back to high school when our algebra teachers would send us home to graph asymptotes?  (Ah, those were the days)  In case you don’t remember what an asymptote is, it is essentially any math equation in which it’s result will continually approach a value, without ever reaching that value.   My software development process follows this same phenomenon.

3rd grade example: Continually Divide by 2.

100 / 2 = 50
50 / 2 = 25
25 / 2 = 12.5
12.5 / 2 = 6.25

As we continue to evaluate the equation to infinity the answer will approach zero, but never get there.

Grown up example: (The equation isn’t important, the phenomenon is)

As a smart-ass kid in high school, I didn’t really understand why this would be important in real life.  In reality, this is one of the driving principals of my daily work flow.

Time is our most precious resource, and a perfect web application is the ideal output.  Just like everything else in this world, perfection is asymptotic.   We can always improve, and we will (hopefully) keep getting closer to perfection, but never actually get there.

As developers and designers, our perfectionistic tendencies get in our way.  If we shed ourselves of the myth of perfection, and instead focus on a series of iterative improvements, our application will improve faster and more reliably than if we had focused on building it in one perfect attempt.

Pay attention to what tasks are taking up your time.  We should always be working on the things which result in the biggest step toward our goal.  We have a lifetime to knock out the little things.