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+++ title = "Things I Learnt The Hard Way - Future Thinking is Future Trashing" date = 2019-06-21
[taxonomies] tags = ["en-au", "books", "things i learnt", "design", "solution"] +++
When developers try to solve a problem, they sometimes try to find a way that will solve all the problems, including the ones that may appear in the future.
Trying to solve the problems that will appear in the future comes with a hefty tax: future problems future will never come -- and, believe me, they will never come -- and you'll end up either having to maintain a huge behemoth of code that will never be fully used or you'll end up rewriting the whole thing 'cause there is a shitton of unused stuff.
Solve the problem you have right now. Then solve the next one. And the next one. At one point, you'll realize there is a pattern emerging from those solutions and then you'll find your "solve everything". This pattern is the abstraction you're looking for and then you'll be able to solve it in a simple way.
As Steve Jobs once said "You can't connect the dots looking forward, only backwards".
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