Let’s look back. This editorial was originally published on Aug 16, 2011, when SSDs weren’t as common as they are now. Can you even buy hard drives? What do you think about the world 15 years later?
I’m at the Fringe Festival with my wife today, so you get to re-read Going Big with SSDs.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I purchased a Lucid Gravity for our second EV. We’ve owned a Tesla for almost five years, and it has been an amazing car. However, we decided that we spend a lot of time driving, and we wanted something a little more luxurious. The Tesla has a bit of a stiff ride, and it’s not quite as lush a car as some others EVs that have come out since we bought our Model Y. After trying a few different brands, we were excited by the Lucid and decided to get one.
Like the Tesla Model Y, this is really a computer on wheels. A lot of software and screens drive the vehicle, though it’s not quite as minimalist as a Tesla vehicle. There are physical buttons and controls in various places, and more than one screen. Some things work better, and I like that.
However, some things are worse. While researching online to learn about the car, we saw someone post this: The Lucid is a better car, but a worse computer. The Tesla is a better computer but worse car.
I agree with that. One thing I’ve learned in owning two and other modern computerized vehicles is that software is hard. Even something as basic as Bluetooth can be a hassle and operate inconsistently in different vehicles. I’ve also learned that product managers and engineers don’t always think deeply about the end-user experience. Perhaps the Lucid developers are under pressure to get features out, but it seems that I’ve encountered more than a few things that could (should?) have been built differently. Or would have if a little more thought were given to the end-user experience, especially given how easily software can be configured with toggles and switches. I’m always amazed when more things aren’t switchable in software.
Yes, I know software takes time, and it is hard. My tenure at Redgate has given me appreciation for the challenges of deciding what to build, test, and release. I’ll write about some of the Lucid decisions on my blog, as there are a few things from the software development perspective that make me scratch my head. It’s not just me, as I’ve known people who have had Fords, Cadillacs, and Volvos who complained to no end about their teething pains with the software. A few were ready to abandon the cars. I don’t feel that way, and I know I’m an early adopter. I have some tolerance and patience for the things I think aren’t built well.
Overall, the car is amazing, very comfortable, and brings a smile to my face, but there are a few software conveniences I got used to in the Tesla that are missing in the Lucid. It’s definitely a worse computer.
But a much, much nicer car. And, as the delivery guy noted, this is the worst version of the car I bought. It will only get better over time.
If you think about a Lucid, use my referral link. We’ll both get some credit.
Steve Jones
at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.
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I was lucky enough to take a vacation a decade ago in Edinburgh with my wife. She came over to the UK with me for a quick trip. We had never been to Scotland together, so we trained up and stayed in Stirling. We walked around the area, visited the Wallace Monument and toured Edinburgh. We hiked up Arthur’s Seat and piled stones on a sunny August afternoon.
We hadn’t planned it, but the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was going on at the time. We saw lots of street performers and wandered into a few comedy and music shows in random places. It was a fun time and we’ve always wanted to go back.
We’re back this year. We trained up earlier today and are spending a few days here, taking in a few shows and unwinding from life. My wife has had a busy year with work and we’ve been aiming to get away every month and recharge a bit. This is our August trip after a few days in Napa in July.
In the spirit of Amy Abel learning to recharge and detoxing, we’re getting away. I don’t know that we’ve avoiding technology, but we are avoiding the work things that create stress and take away from life.
Make sure you take your vacation and get breaks away from the things that stress you out.
Most of us will work on software for our organization, and we might not want to or care about the end result being great. We do want it to work, and we want clients to find it useful. If we have external customers using our systems, maybe we want it to be great. In most of my experience, people are often proud of their work, sometimes ashamed, but not many people spend a lot of time making their corporate applications great.
Often because we don’t have (or aren’t allowed) the time to do so.
Basecamp is a popular SaaS project management solution, and Hey is a reimagined email service that many people love. One of the founders of the company wrote an interesting post on software being built that starts with this sentence: “The speed at which a product is developed doesn’t inherently make the product better or worse.”
It’s a bit of a shot at AI, but it also goes into the fact that we often measure our software process in ways that aren’t about the output. Most organizations have abandoned lines of code as a metric, but I do see commits or PRs being used, as well as other metrics. Trying to decide if your developers are effective isn’t a horrible idea; after all, we should be ensuring that they are getting something done, but none of those metrics necessarily help us make better software.
I see that at Redgate, as we incorporate AI into our work. A lot of the things that make software take time aren’t solved with AI. They’re solved with deep understanding of the problem space, what your customers need, and what helps them work well. AI accelerates some things, but we still need product people empathizing deeply with customers and designers watching for UX issues that create friction for customers. AI can help speed up the experiments and outputs in some ways, but just adding in chatbots or AI agents that write code isn’t necessarily useful.
There are a lot of decisions in building software. What to do, what not to do, what’s more important than something else, and of course, what approach to take in the architecture. That’s before we even get to performance, which is something that far too often gets ignored, at least for the code being run against databases. Building great software is hard, but it can be done, and AI can help.
You just need talented humans guiding the process.
Steve Jones
Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.
Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.
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