80% of the effect for 20% of the effort
Back when I made games and pretended to be interested in the industry of making money, there was a brief period when you could hardly go through a meeting without someone advocating half-assing it, at least to begin with. There were various euphemisms for this: "rapid prototyping" (which predates 3D printing as a phrase), "throwing up a demo," "proof of concept" - but the baldest and most honest I heard was "80% of the effect for 20% of the effort."
To this day, there's a part of me that likes this sort of argument. It goes like this: the publisher wants to see what we're making. They want to know what they signed up for, what kind of progress we're making, whether it's going to be done on time, but most of all, they want to see where they're headed, and to give something to marketing to get those guys fired up to start selling it, to whoever marketing sells it to (mostly other publishers, AFAICT - not distribution, who want to see a shelf-ready box, and not end consumers, who like rumours in magazines but dislike waiting another year before it hits the shelves).
As time goes on, though, the other part - the one that's concerned with finishing development and getting the product in a box - has been disliking the phrase and the attitude more and more. Because it always leads to trouble. It always sets up false expectations, which usually threaten to come crashing down 6 months before development should end, but are heroically held up by some hapless flak until about 2 weeks into Beta-testing. When they crash they crash all the harder. Because half-assing it becomes the MO for the whole project: as soon as that flaky demo is up, everyone - first the publisher, then management, and finally parts of the project team - starts to believe in it, as if it were a real. stable, reliable platform to build on top of.
Soit does my heart good, even as it pains me, to see this comment from Marcus Pivato (the main moment that's worth reading in the whole thread):
It is relatively easy and fun to write a 90%-finished textbook. It is incredibly difficult, time-consuming, onerous, unpleasant, and damaging to your sanity to write a 100% finished textbook. You spend five times more time proofreading, correcting, cross-referencing, fixing ambiguities, and adding exercises/solutions/etc than you spent actually `writing’ the book. For this reason, most of the free books available online are basically half-assed and useless as a text for a course. The `other 10%’ is all the heavy work, and it is what makes the difference between someone’s free online lecture notes, and a book which will actually get published by a major academic publisher.
To this day, there's a part of me that likes this sort of argument. It goes like this: the publisher wants to see what we're making. They want to know what they signed up for, what kind of progress we're making, whether it's going to be done on time, but most of all, they want to see where they're headed, and to give something to marketing to get those guys fired up to start selling it, to whoever marketing sells it to (mostly other publishers, AFAICT - not distribution, who want to see a shelf-ready box, and not end consumers, who like rumours in magazines but dislike waiting another year before it hits the shelves).
As time goes on, though, the other part - the one that's concerned with finishing development and getting the product in a box - has been disliking the phrase and the attitude more and more. Because it always leads to trouble. It always sets up false expectations, which usually threaten to come crashing down 6 months before development should end, but are heroically held up by some hapless flak until about 2 weeks into Beta-testing. When they crash they crash all the harder. Because half-assing it becomes the MO for the whole project: as soon as that flaky demo is up, everyone - first the publisher, then management, and finally parts of the project team - starts to believe in it, as if it were a real. stable, reliable platform to build on top of.
Soit does my heart good, even as it pains me, to see this comment from Marcus Pivato (the main moment that's worth reading in the whole thread):
It is relatively easy and fun to write a 90%-finished textbook. It is incredibly difficult, time-consuming, onerous, unpleasant, and damaging to your sanity to write a 100% finished textbook. You spend five times more time proofreading, correcting, cross-referencing, fixing ambiguities, and adding exercises/solutions/etc than you spent actually `writing’ the book. For this reason, most of the free books available online are basically half-assed and useless as a text for a course. The `other 10%’ is all the heavy work, and it is what makes the difference between someone’s free online lecture notes, and a book which will actually get published by a major academic publisher.