rgw@icdattcwsm:~/Blog$ cat 2024-10-25-Bro-Do-You-Even-Lift.md

In aerodynamics, there is a trade-off between weight and lift.

WEIGHT does NOT guarantee LIFT. And vice-versa.

As altitude increases, air becomes thinner, and an aircraft has to maintain sufficient lift. Light aircraft typically have less powerful engines and smaller wing areas compared to larger, high-altitude-capable aircraft.

Enterprise software is said to be clunky for this reason. The ambition to scale makes a light and lean codebase difficult and improbable.

That is simply not true. Clunkiness in software is a symptom of poor leadership. Code SHOULD and MUST be Marie-Kondo-CLEAN. Sub-optimal is okay. Slow API responses are also okay. Anything less than Marie-Kondo-CLEAN is NOT okay.

Funnily enough, where there are industry standards for API response times, page load times, etc - there isn't one for clean code that is compelling enough to block a release.

If the laws of physics governing an aircraft's ascent applied to startups, it would follow that the true opportunity of startups lies in going higher while being lighter.

A startup is not a startup if it does not go higher while being lighter. Many draw a false inference that bloatware is an inevitability of scale.

While chaos (or, turbulence) is an inevitability of scale, bloat is a choice.

rgw@icdattcwsm:~/Blog$ cd ..