Optimize for smoothness not speed (Ship It! #16)

This week Gerhard is joined by Justin Searls, Test Double co-founder and CTO. Also a 🐞 magnet. They talk about how to deal with the pressure of shipping faster, why you should optimize for smoothness not speed, and why focusing on consistency is key. Understanding the real why behind what you do is also important. There’s a lot more to it, as its a nuanced and complex discussion, and well worth your time.

Expect a decade of learnings compressed into one hour, as well as disagreements on some ops and infrastructure topics — all good fun. In the show notes, you will find Gerhard’s favorite conference talks Justin gave a few years back.

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Featuring:

• Justin Searls – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
• Gerhard Lazu – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X

Show Notes:

⭐️ Justin is giving the keynote at this year’s Reliable Web Summit. The topic is why distrust is at the heart of a lot of the issues we discussed and how to build trust as an individual, small team, and organization. ⭐️

• It all started with this Tweet
• 5 for 5000: Find your Leading Indicators
• 🎬 The Selfish Programmer
• 🎬 Running a business, demystified
• 🎬 How to program
• The most impressive Olympic event I’ve seen out of Tokyo so far

Justin Searls: If you’re a programmer and you’re happy with the work you’re doing, you’re growing in the ways you want, and you feel pushed to do your best work as opposed to work the most hours, congratulations! That’s all too rare.

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!