[germinator]

Yeah, it's a weird metaphor, especially since plywood is a premium, structural material. I wish my Ikea furniture used plywood. Instead, you get fiberboard.

It's also a good example of how the metaphor this blog post is predicated on can fall apart. Your customers care about durability, but they make purchasing decisions based on cost and outward appearance. In a world like that, where you can't satisfy all requirements at once, you inevitably end up cutting corners on the things the customer cares about but can't measure. But is that right? That's how you end up with $200 furniture that lasts a year or two in a home with children or pets.

It's also easy to neglect cumulative costs. Back to software: does it matter if your app uses 100 MB of memory when it could be using 1 MB? On an individual basis, no, because RAM is cheap. Cumulatively, when every other app developer thinks the same, and when you multiply it by billions of devices, your decision might have actually cost lives if you consider the increased emissions and countless other distant externalities.

A milder version of the blog's claim is definitely true. You should pick your battles. But it's all about trade-offs, there are few problems that truly don't matter to anyone.