[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> My “trick” during that final year was simple: I always tried to write correctly, not just when I was asked to, but all the time. After a year of subconscious improvements, I aced the exam.

Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect.

[txru]

I'm trying this with learning piano, and I see the advice in a good number of places-- if I make a mistake in a phrase, I repeat the phrase 5-7 times correctly, instead of pushing through. It's been working out well so far-- I'm not 'burning in' my mistakes.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Ah, but perfect is the enemy of good.

[Night_Thastus]

Perfect is the enemy of ever shipping an actual product.

[bccdee]

That's a justification for making a product with fewer features, not for making a product that's packed with bugs.

[Night_Thastus]

The only product guaranteed to be 'perfect' has 0 features at all.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

I think this is over-indexing "perfect" a bit. My intended point is that practicing the "correct" way will lead to improvement and especially to learning "correct" habits. Perhaps replace "correct" with "helpful"; it's about paying attention to the actions one takes and ensuring that they generally aid in progressing towards a goal.

If the goal is to make a program, I make sure that my thoughts about the program are sound before actually building it. If I need to play around a bit to understand the problem domain then I additionally need to be prepared to throw out the play-work. If I run into a bug, I remember it and proactively avoid it in the future. I think about the limitations of my design before I start building. This is my implementation of writing "without bugs"; it doesn't have to be perfect, it just can't be something which I know to be wrong.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Hmm... Hasn't been my experience. I've been shipping a lot of really high-Quality stuff for decades.

It just takes a lot of work. No shortcuts.

But that WFM. YMMV.