Everyday Astronaut interviewed Elon Musk whilst being shown around Starbase. It’s really interesting to hear two geeks talking tech. What really resonates with me starts at time code 13:30 where Elon describes his thoughts on the development process. It reminds me of my own thoughts on best practice in software companies. I’ll link below, and give the TL;DR so you don’t have to watch it all.
- Make your requirements less dumb. Doesn’t matter who came up with the requirements, they’re dumb. If that person is smart it’s more dumb.
- Prune the process. If you don’t need to add stuff back in, you didn’t prune enough. Any requirements need to come with a name, not a department. No use having a requirement if there isn’t somebody to back it up. Departments forget.
- Simplify or optimise. Common mistake of the smart engineers is to optimise something that shouldn’t exist.
- Accelerate cycle time.
- Automate, with the sub-note not to duplicate in process automated tests that are represented at the end of the production line.
Super Soft Cafe 