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Ask HN: Do you ask what does not work? What are the weak points?

2 points by unlog ↗ HN
Everyone is almost always very excited to tell with a luxury of details how good their things are and what they have accomplished, which is good, but there's very few that talk about the weak spots, the things that doesn't work "yet" or could be improved. (ranges from job interviews, open source software, to production changes, you name it)

1 comment

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NTroy
You are absolutely right. I work in the field of information security, where this seemingly backwards approach of thinking can quickly crumble optimistic projects! If you're not implementing security through the mindset of someone looking to break that implementation in every, single way possible, you're going to be in for a nasty surprise... and I'm sorry to say that I've seen it happen all too often.

To be fair, I think it's important for people to promote their ideas, projects, accomplishments, etc. However, I think your point intersects with that in two major areas:

1.) After-Thought: It's important to reflect upon what didn't go as expected, what doesn't look right, and what went wrong, and learn from it (very cliche, I know)

2.) Forward-Thinking: I love to see project that layout a roadmap. Not just a roadmap of "here's what we want to do", but a roadmap of "here's what we want to change", and "here's what we want to fix." This adds an important level of transparency to the project, and can really garner user trust and involvement.