It's all hacks, all the way down
Imperfect, but good enough.
For the longest time in my career I’ve been plagued by a fear that perhaps I’m missing the perfect solution to a given problem. Well, the fear is that I’ll miss the “best” solution and inadvertently blow something up, with catastrophic consequences for my career and life.
But what if, in fact, every pragmatic, valuable solution is an imperfect one? A hack, if you will.
An idea’s been brewing in the back of my mind for some time now: what if reality is filled with these sorts of hacks all the way down to the finest levels of detail? For example, what if atoms are “hacks” of a sort, which are “hacked” together into cells, which are “hacked” together into humans, who hack hardware and software solutions together?
At almost every level of detail I can think of examples of how reality has facilitated structures or processes that work well under certain conditions, but fall apart fairly quickly outside of those conditions. When some smaller structures or processes are “stable” enough, others are built on top of them or by composing them. None of these composed structures, however, could be considered “perfect” because outside of their workable conditions they can become a house of cards.
What makes me think there is such a thing as a “perfect” software solution to a given problem in the first place? Maybe the only practical solutions are necessarily imperfect.
Imperfect, but good enough.