Be Brave, Go Low

There is an inclination in software to apply abstractions unnecessarily. It's striving for easiness, to apply a solution you didn't write that addresses a problem you may or may not actually have. Its like shopping for things, things that may not be needed.

I have always found this behavior odd, because it comes at a cost. It's just one more item of luggage adding weight slowing you down, gradually eroding your ability scale, and ultimately increasing your costs until you are downing in tech debt.

The Normal Path

The normal solution to this problem, commonly referred to as technical debt, is the middle path. The middle path strikes a balance between eliminating unnecessary abstractions, as in shopping less, while also striving to not increase human labor unnecessarily. An example could be using the HTTP library that ships with Node.js instead of using a framework, like Express. Express lightens the burden of reading and writing many common conventions, including HTTP services, in Node.js. The raw utility value that Express provides, as opposed to similar capabilities that already ship with Node, are however strikingly limited.

That is the normal path, a path of balance. Do not add more than you need to achieve the same utility. This path is entirely one sided in that it strives to do no harm, but never strives to otherwise find additional value.

The Other Extreme

As an alternative consider the opposite extreme. Instead of asking what can we add, or not, ask what can we take away. This is a case for minimalism in the artistic definition of the term.

Going lower in the utility and capabilities of a product comes with sharp costs. Just as abstractions provide a sense of easiness going low absolutely means reinventing wheels. Most people are incapable of accomplishing this due to fear, or more specifically due to their perceptions of uncertainty avoidance.

There is an assumption that reinventing wheels tends to produce inferior results. That belief coupled with the projected increased labor required is the basis for most of this fear. The validity of such fear materializes, as a self-fulfilling prophecy, with inverse proportionality to the persistence of the person developing the given capability.

That inverse relationship exists due to a discovery curve. When developing some feature, utility, or capability largely outside the developer's prior experiences the given developer will encounter numerous failures, many of which will not be immediately known to that developer. This is the developer equivalent to investment's valley of death. Everything will feel like failure at first during the intensity of labor when so many common operating scenarios continue to fail while knowing there is a perfectly good and durable option freely available and absent such labor. Even once the common scenarios achieve divine resolution many other common failures will continue to emerge over time as the collision of not considered conventions emerge.

The valley of death described above is very real and expected. The ability to address this and push through it is not a technology or intelligence problem. It is a personality problem. It requires an irrational dedication. That irrationality often comes in the form of a gambler's fallacy, obsessive qualities, or to faith in a belief system that improperly quantify the outcome of the initiative over costs to achieve that outcome.

The Result

Once the wheel is successfully reinvented a series of magical things happen.

First, there is a sense of pride. You have accomplished the irrational, something that everybody told you would fail. Yet, there you stand successful with a capability no one else has. In addition to the very real emotions that come from the sense of accomplishment you have something of unique value.

Second, there exists a new utility. You now possess a capability few people have with an original output nobody else has created. While this new utility may directly achieve some stated goal its primary value is its primitive nature, because that allows its use in ways not prior imagined.

Third, there exists new knowledge only available from the journey across the valley of death. After falling into and side stepping so many repeated failures along the way you now retain an intrinsic knowledge of risks, potentials, and performance that are largely beyond expression.

Finally, there exists new performance capabilities. These new performance capabilities may mean faster execution but more likely mean the ability to scale. The ability to scale means the ability to apply new solutions where such ability did not prior exist. This new scale only exists from the combination of the new utility coupled with the knowledge gained through the struggle to achieve that new utility. Such scale unlocks second and third order benefits unfolding otherwise hidden exponential growth patterns.

The Competition

Nobody will envision the value of reinventing the wheel. Everybody will curse you for the seemingly wasted effort, until the result is achieved. Even then once the new utility is self evident still almost nobody will see the potential exponential value immediately around the next corner.

It is only once that next corner is traversed and the next level of utility, possibly multiple levels of increased utility, is further achieved will people see what they have missed, but then its too late. The journey to achieve the result took time and continued frustrating persistence against continuous social resistance. Now, though, others will attempt to replicate your experience by pouring many resources in their own experience hoping to condense the journey into the shortest time span.

In Summary

Go low. Build something new with less that is lower in abstraction. There is eminent failure to come. Once the failure is overcome and the work is achieved new capabilities are unlocked, of which many were not prior imagined. So, be brave and go low to achieve things nobody else can dream of. As a case study watch this educational video about Shuji Nakamura, the co-inventor of the blue and white LEDs.