On building software slowly

There is a sentence I keep returning to, attributed to nearly everyone but probably nobody: the work is the practice. It used to sound like a slogan. Lately it sounds like a description of a room I am inside.

When I started writing here I assumed each post was a kind of finished object — a small artifact that got pushed out into the world and then was done. The longer I do this, the less it feels that way. The post is the practice. The site is the practice. The act of pressing publish, with all its embarrassments, is the practice.

I used to want every piece to make a single argument. Now I want pieces that hold their shape long enough for a reader to disagree with them carefully. That is a different ambition. It requires sentences that are slightly slower than I find comfortable.

A short list

• Don’t publish what you don’t want to reread.
• Cut anything that sounds like the bio you wrote at twenty-two.
• Leave room for the reader to disagree without shouting.

I will probably rewrite this in six months. That, too, is the practice.