Recent events in my life (some of you will know what I am talking about!) have got me thinking about how we approach a problem, a task, a challenge, or just day to day things.
My usual approach is usually quite a gentle one, non-confrontational, normally quite sensitive to the feelings of anyone else involved, or the fragility of the subject in hand.
Upon recently coming to wits end with something that I could no longer fathom how to deal with, I took advice from a friend, and although to me the advice seemed strange, and slightly uncomfortable, I followed through with the advice.
The advice, of course, was to do with a woman. My usual recourse is to be the most charming, gentle, kind and understanding guy out there, but after a long period of confusion it seemed to be going nowhere..
So the advice was to do just the opposite: in effect, make the other person so jealous and unsure about things that she is forced into a position where she has to act, or where she will want me to pay attention to her so much that the ‘power’ is all in my hands.
Sometimes listening to advice from friends is good, sometimes acting on that advice is good, sometimes no so. Whilst I cannot say that in this case it was necessarily the worst thing I could have done, it didnt really lead down any productive avenues. I did however sort out the situation with my usual approach, which seems to work a lot better, and in a way makes me glad to think I am not doing everything wrong!
So what does ANY of this have to do with the title?? You may ask.. I am getting there!!
My point is, there are often two different ways of approaching a problem, do different ways of tackling that problem, even if they might have what looks like the same outcome.
You can come across a problem and just wrestle it into submission, delving away into levels of application stack that you should not be anywhere close to, forcing strange and spurious checks all over the place to catch something, bashing out a 500 line script to eventually get the outcome that you desire.
It might work! It might provide results.. but you are just lying to yourself when you say you can keep it going, that it is maintainable, that you are comfortable with the way things are. (I am not sure if Im talking about code or women any more!)
Or
You can find out about the problem, you can learn about the nuances and quirks and niggles of the code, of the application, and you can take it gently, respectfully, honestly, and write something beautiful, something that you can look back on and say ‘I did good there’.
Your choice!