[ChrisMarshallNY]

I'm not sure I'd be comfortable, calling it "disgusting."

It's different from the one I tend to apply, in my own work.

I used to work for a famous Japanese imaging corporation. Their brand was pretty much synonymous with "Quality."

They got that way, by practicing Perfection as a religion. It could be very, very tough, to deal with, but it gave me a great appreciation for a Quality mindset, in my own work.

The result is that even my lash-up, throwaway code, tends to be better than many folks' final release code.

This has great advantages for me. In fact, I just experienced one, a few minutes ago. If the baseline code is of as high Quality as I can possibly make it, then I can avoid lash-ups, or at least, reduce their severity, later. I refactored a fairly complex server interaction timeline, and it was made much easier, because I was pretty damn anal, when I first wrote it, maybe six months ago.

[fredrivett]

I think this is a good point I didn't convey in my hastily-written-in-10-minutes-blog-post-that-I-didn't-expect-to-reach-the-HN-front-page.

I can fall into perfectionism, but I find this a suboptimal mindset for healthy outcomes.

Excellence seems the far better path.

Keeping a high bar still, but not expecting something that's unreasonable.

Continuing to challenge yourself to get better, but not expecting yourself to have achieved something already that's out of your grasp.

For me it's about trajectory and momentum over perfection.

[mattgreenrocks]

Aim high, but have compassion for yourself as you push forward.

This is not embracing mediocrity, it is not disengagement, slacking, or merely rejecting perfectionism. It is understanding that the process of growth and improvement exacts a toll, and that growth is not always a pure function of time invested.

[Dracophoenix]

How does one practice perfection without succumbing to overoptimistic expectations and the burnout follows?

[ChrisMarshallNY]

They use perfection as a target, and any deviation is considered a national emergency. They will have all-day meetings, with screaming matches, over whether or not to release with a known issue.

It is a lot of pressure. Not for the faint of heart. They are demanding as hell. Their testing/QA is crazy. 3,000-line Excel punchlists. If even one item on that list fails, the whole shooting match is sent back.

You can't argue with the results, though. They have been selling very expensive optical gear, for over 100 years, and people base their entire careers on this gear.

That said, I think they are really struggling, these days, and I believe that their conservatism and rigidity play a big part in that.