{"id":26,"date":"2015-10-09T13:37:29","date_gmt":"2015-10-09T13:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tech\/?p=26"},"modified":"2015-10-09T07:41:48","modified_gmt":"2015-10-09T11:41:48","slug":"ecfr-0-1-4-thats-what-makes-it-interesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tech\/2015\/10\/09\/ecfr-0-1-4-thats-what-makes-it-interesting\/","title":{"rendered":"eCFR 0.1.4 – That’s what makes it interesting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2026 there\u2019s another kind of detail that no shop manual goes into but that is common to all machines and can be given here. This is the detail of the Quality relationship, the gumption relationship, between the machine and the mechanic, which is just as intricate as the machine itself. Throughout the process of fixing the machine things always come up, low quality things, from a dusted knuckle to an accidentally ruined \u201cirreplaceable\u201d assembly. These drain off gumption, destroy enthusiasm and leave you so discouraged you want to forget the whole business. I call these things \u2018gumption traps\u2019. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re in a gumption trap, and it\u2019s slowing down our eCFR feature rollout.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve met some unexpected challenges (unexpected, except insofar as you expect, in a general way, that all projects have challenges). In a group as small as ours, passing around a cold can be enough to stall a project for a week \u2013 or two. Right now, though, <\/span>one of the three team members who has been working on the eCFR<\/span><\/a> is leaving for a new job, and this will naturally slow things down for the next few months.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re still working on stuff: <\/span>improving<\/span><\/a> our indents, for instance. But some of the new features which we have beautifully, intricately constructed in our heads — our ideas of Quality — \u00a0are going to take a while longer to get out into the real world. \u00a0We\u2019re down a mechanic.<\/span><\/p>\n

All projects have difficulties complications, setbacks, gumption traps. They\u2019re not covered in the shop manual. We spend our days skinning our knuckles on coding details, saying \u201cwait, <\/span>this<\/span><\/i> regex needed to be capturing and <\/span>that<\/span><\/i> one needed to be non-capturing!\u201d. It\u2019s nice, at the end, when you\u2019re seeing the beautifully humming final product, to forget them. But they\u2019re an essential part of the process.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, \u201cMotorcycle maintenance gets frustrating. Angering. Infuriating. That\u2019s what makes it interesting.\u201d Something to bear in mind when you start turning the first bolt.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2026 there\u2019s another kind of detail that no shop manual goes into but that is common to all machines and can be given here. This is the detail of the Quality relationship, the gumption relationship, between the machine and the mechanic, which is just as intricate as the machine itself. Throughout the process of fixing […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[322],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cfr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/27"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}