[coldtea]

>When you look at his achievements[2], I have trouble finding one that would have succeeded with OP's "advice". Between an app for coffee-lovers and QEMU, I think the careful thinking and engineering crushes the hype of "let's do it". Sure it sounds good, but that is not the way you will achieve something meaningful.

I think both you and the parent got the wrong impression.

The article is not saying "just start coding -- and skip planning and engineering".

He says "just start working hard on the problem from day one, INCLUDING the planning and engineering parts -- instead of leaving it for later, or doing only low hanging fruits in the beginning".

"Start working hard early on != just start with coding immediately".

>- I distrust analogies, and this gamma-correction one is definitely unsound (not to say dumb)

Nothing unsound or dumb about it. It's just that he could reduce it to the curve shown --taken to mean project completion--, without mentioning gamma at all.

The curve is the important part of the analogy, not gamma.