[saberdancer]

It's an anecdote which could be completely fabricated, I'd expect it is since the source seems to be a book where it is mentioned as story with no names.

If anyone has some kind of study or more concrete example, I'd love to hear about it.

[meheleventyone]

It should be obvious to most people that it's trivially true that practice helps you improve skills that require manual dexterity.

I also think it's highly likely the anecdote is supposed to be illustrative rather than literal. IMO it's meant to be advice to students not to fret about how perfect their work is and that with time it will improve. It's just been distorted by the "one quick hack" culture of self improvement.

[hairofadog]

I’ve heard this story lots of different ways and assumed it was a fictional allegory. If it’s true, I can’t help imagining some poor student in the “quality” group at the end of the class, after the big reveal, looking down at their inferior ceramic bowl and going, “well, that was a waste of time,” and then maybe there's a sad moment later where they give up their dreams of becoming a ceramicist.

[jlokier]

> highly likely the anecdote is supposed to be illustrative rather than literal

If it is a made up anecdote, that would be rather misleading under a headline that says "science-backed".

The article argues that it's supported by data that focus on quantity leads to better quality than focus on quantity.

It doesn't argue that it's merely a compelling idea that we should try for ourselves.

[meheleventyone]

Random writing on the internet can be misleading.

[ajuc]

Unix vs Multix.

Plan 9 and GNU Herd vs Linux.

Spring vs EJB.

Rest vs Soap vs CORBA.

C vs Algol.

It's easier to do something simple and iterate on it than to do something perfect from the start.

[arthev]

Trivially leads to local optima only, though. You're intentionally making a stake somewhere with no reasonable expectation of high quality, after all.

[meheleventyone]

That's a different idea though.

Rather the whole point here is that when learning it's better to focus on quantity over quality AND by doing so that quality will naturally be better. The parent is looking for examples of this latter idea.

[saberdancer]

I'm mostly interested in the source of the story, it sounds completely fabricated and if it is true, it should be very easy to replicate.

But let's take the idea to the extreme, imagine we are building an system, one team starts building and improving on the design for 6 months. Other team builds and starts anew every 2 weeks. Who would have a better system at the end of 6 months? Tough to tell, the iterative one will probably build it from the ground in a better way with less technical debt but who will have a more complete system or more features.

[meheleventyone]

I don't think it's important for the message if the story is true or made up. It's overthinking things to an extreme.

I also think it's being misapplied when put into a completely different context. Teamwork, not students learning, project that is harder to start again and slower to iterate that way etc. I'm not sure we should consider every piece of advice as being some how completely universal.

We could also overthink it in the other direction. The students themselves could have come to the conclusion that the best way to get quality was lots of practice and made lots of pots or parts of pots until they had perfected pot making and merely presented the final result. Whereas the students that went for quantity merely made a load of crap pots. Same lesson but roles reversed.

[cafard]

I think it does matter whether true or made up. Otherwise, why not present it as a thought experiment?

[redis_mlc]

> I don't think it's important for the message if the story is true or made up. It's overthinking things to an extreme.

Agreed. There's a lot of pedants on HN who have what I call "the Snopes illness."

[ajuc]

If you consider version n+1 of your software a new product - it's the same idea.

This is basically agile vs waterfall.

[meheleventyone]

Starting simple versus starting complex is different than making the same kind of thing repeatedly to refine the act of making it and the end quality.

Iterating on a project is definitely a great way to learn about it, refine how you make it and accrete complexity. So it can but doesn't necessarily have to encompass both ideas.

I also think that whilst it's tempting to stretch the anecdote to fit all sorts of ideas it's particularly unhelpful when trying to discuss the idea it actually references.

[saberdancer]

But if you threw away all the code after each version, I doubt you'd get much done. Sure the code might be perfect, but you can do only so much in a short timeframe.

Perhaps it would be best to iterate fast early on in the project, throw away a couple of weeks with PoCs and then go for the big one.

[adambyrtek]

I get your point, but wasn't Linux the simple solution that got improved over time vs GNU Hurd which tried to implement the perfect micro-kernel architecture?

[ajuc]

Yes, that's my point?

EDIT: Ah, you mean the order is different :)

[kstenerud]

But this can also backfire:

- C++

- CMake

- PHP

- Postscript

And it can work well:

- TeX

- Git (not the later additions)

[billfruit]

Why is a study or a concrete example necessary, if I might ask. It works perfectly fine as a thought experiment.

[jlokier]

Some thought experiments tell you a useful answer.

But this thought experiment doesn't tell you what works, as either outcome is quite compelling and plausible. So it's not much use as a thought experiment, other than to show that it might be interesting to study it in the real world.

I.e. it might be "obvious" to you that focus on quantity over quality leads to better quality as assessed by another in the thought experiment. But it might be equally "obvious" to someone else the other way.

A real study would be interesting, because there might be a real world consistent pattern. It might actually be useful to know which one works best for real.

[billfruit]

But we can reason theoretically about what could be the outcome of the thought experiment, and if that is compelling enough, that I think is sufficient insight, that carrying out a real experiment wouldn't give any additional knowledge.

Also since this human behaviour we talking about here. Experimental Psychology is a field known for its credibility crisis, its inconsistent and possible non-reproduceable results, that I have not much faith in it to give us useful insights, and I would be more interested in hearing many of those matters addressed from a purely theoretic point of view, than through conclusions from dubious experimental data.

[jlokier]

Sure, if there is one outcome.

In this case, when I do the thought experiment, my mind runs both possibilities and concludes they are both plausible and compelling.

When I do the thought meta-experiment of imagining other people doing the thought experiment, it sees some people imagining one outcome is compelling and likely, and other people imagining the other outcome is compelling and likely.

I'm not sure what useful theoretical point of view you would draw from that, with regard to this particular experiment.

[xenocratus]

Because if your conclusion relies on the actual result of the experiment then having it as a thought experiment only leaves you open to biases.

[mkl]

A study or concrete example is necessary to know whether it is truth or a just-so fantasy. I don't think thinking about it is enough; even though we know people improve with the right kind of practice, if you're judged purely by quantity, there is no guarantee of improvement.