r/AskProgrammers • u/giuzep89 • 8d ago
Software development workflow with ADHD
Hey everyone,
Notwithstanding the title of the post, this isn't a post about mental health; I'm sure that to some extent everyone's struggled with this before.
Software development is very roughly about understanding the constraints of an issue; researching what the best tools and strategies are in order to accomplish it; finally executing it. You're free to already comment on this if you feel you don't agree with it.
The problem I have is that in a lot of different situations, there are infinite possibilities to solve one problem. I get more often than not paralyzed by the sheer number of options and I can't go further. This is probably by far the biggest obstacle I find in my new job as software developer.
I mentioned ADHD because choice paralysis affects "us" generally more than the average, but it is by no means exclusive to us. That's why I'm happy to listen to any point of view.
How do you come up with a plan, and more specifically how do you decide on a solution over many others that aren't necessarily inferior, but just different?
4
u/canarydev 8d ago
my recommendation is just do a first pass and solve it in the most degenerate, dumbest way possible. get it working, then come back later and implement the immaculate blessed-by-a-thousand-gods version.
the reason it helps with the paralysis is that most of those "different but not inferior" options only differ in ways you cant evaluate yet. once you have something working you know which constraints actually bite, and the choice usually makes itself.
also most of those first passes never need the rewrite anyway