The Second Ideal: Focus, Flow, and Joy

Hi,

When was the last time you lost track of time? Just keep going. Without it being hard. With full concentration. You shut out everything around you. You forget to eat. You delay going to the toilet.

For me, it was the last time I was designing backendhance.com .

I was totally absorbed. And it was so satisfying. I build my website with Hugo. And it’s super fast.

Should the header be a bit larger? font-size adjusted. I click on my browser to view the change and BAM it’s compiled.

Okay, I don’t like it. Make it a bit smaller again. BAM - compiled.

But maybe the letter-spacing needs to be less. *BAM* - compiled.

That’s better. Much better.

git commit -m "Adjust letter-spacing for headers" && git push

2 minutes later the change is live. Without me having to do anything more. Thanks to CD.

This is a flow that is fun. Small changes. Tested quickly locally. Deployed quickly.

That’s what the second ideal is about: *Focus, Flow, and Joy.*

When we can quickly look at our results. When we get them live quickly. Then it’s fun. And what’s fun comes easily to us. We don’t discuss the work for long. Because we like doing it.

In practice, however, such a flow is rarely experienced in projects. Most projects rarely integrate. Each developer works on their little piece of the product. Results are abstractly verified through tests, if at all.

Customer feedback only comes months later. We don’t even remember what we did there. And why, actually? And do I still stand behind that feature? And now I have to fix it, because everything is on fire?

That’s no fun. It’s heavy. We start to discuss. We don’t sit down and fix the problem on our end. We do everything to rather get rid of it.

Create an environment where everything is easy.

Starting the project must be easy.

Compiling the project must be quick.

There must be frequent deployments.

You won’t regret it.

Rule the Backend,

~ Marcus