Re: John Larkin is a ridiculous, posturing nut case

John Larkin wrote:


The business isn't the goal, the electronics is. The biz feeds us
interesting problems and appreciative customers, and provides us
resources to support design. Getting it right, preferably perfect,
ideally beautiful, the first pass is an aesthetic drive more than an
economic one. But I agree, multiple iterations are a waste of time and
energy and money. It's a bad habit; it's sloppy.

John

Well said!

I used to have an engineer that never got it right the first time. His designs and program logic were always Rev G or Rev H. Even then those revisions were released, one really wondered if they were right. He moved on, founded his own company, and even today, his designs are in a constant state of tweak. No two production runs are the same.

When I brought on a production guy, he asked what our production fallout rate was. When I said 0%, he said, "No, seriously" and asked the same question again. He just could not believe that it could be that way.

In Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine", one of the principles articulates his motivation as "Pinball". If you do good, you get to play again. That one stuck with me. The only way you get to design the next one is to get the current one right. Otherwise, your efforts will be slowed by the attention that your past mistakes will demand.

b. Farmer
.

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