{"id":1620,"date":"2010-09-18T17:46:36","date_gmt":"2010-09-18T08:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2010-09-18\/1620"},"modified":"2010-11-25T09:14:23","modified_gmt":"2010-11-25T00:14:23","slug":"breakdown-when-good-intentions-dont-scale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2010-09-18\/1620","title":{"rendered":"Breakdown: When Good Intentions Don’t Scale"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\nNOTE<\/b>: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.\n<\/div>\n\n\n
<\/a>\nNikon D700 + Nikkor 14-24mm f\/2.8 @ 14 mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>1250 sec, f<\/span>\/5, ISO 200 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nA Little<\/span> Over-Exposure<\/span>\nworks out well.... sometimes\nfrom last autumn's outing that produced “Thatched Roofs and Colored Canopies at the Himukai Shrine, Kyoto Japan<\/a>”\n<\/div>\n\n\n
\n\n

This is a long post. The executive<\/span> summary is:<\/p>\n\n

\n\n

Lightroom plugin development consumed me to the point of breakdown, and\nsomething needs to change: I'm going to<\/span> revert back to treating it like the\nhobby it is, doing what I find<\/span> pleasure in (developing my plugins), but\navoiding what brings me stress (being subjugated to my mail and comment\nqueues).<\/p>\n\n

So, the end result is that my plugin development will continue, but if\nyou send me a note<\/span> about the plugins, I probably<\/span>\nwon't respond. Sorry.<\/p> <\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The verb “to scale<\/i>” in computer science refers to a solution's<\/span>\nability to handle dramatically increasing demands. Filtering spam by\npersonally inspecting each message, for example, works fine if you get only\na few<\/span> each day, but reaches its limits when you get hundreds a day,<\/span> and\nbecomes totally unworkable if you got thousands. Personal inspection just\ndoesn't scale<\/i> to those kinds of numbers, which is why in real life\nwe need a totally<\/span> different approach, such as automatic filtering as a\nfirst<\/span> line of defense.<\/p>\n\n

When I first started writing my plugins for Adobe\nLightroom<\/a> and giving them away, I was thrilled<\/span> to get a response<\/span> back,\nwhether a “thanks!” or a bug<\/span> report or a feature<\/span> request. Engineers like to\nbuild things that people use, and though it was just a hobby,<\/span> the\ngratification I got<\/span> from the response was real. But after<\/span> several years and\nmore than a dozen<\/span> plugins, the constant flow of feedback from users became\nfairly overwhelming, and after some fretting<\/a> about what\nto do, I decided<\/span> to move to a “donationware” model<\/a>\nthat kept my plugins free for everyone to use if they wanted, but also\nallowed people to easily express “thanks” through gifts. The extra “thanks”\nwould keep me encouraged though the more dreary aspects of this hobby.<\/p>\n\n

Unfortunately, it didn't work because it didn't address the real problem.<\/p>\n\n

As my plugins got more popular (and more plentiful; I'm up to 20+\nplugins now), so did the feedback of all kinds. The problem<\/span> is that my\noriginal idea — that I write<\/span> and maintain these plugins, and handle\nall feedback — just doesn't scale<\/i><\/b> to the number of\nfolks using them. All the thanks<\/span> and gratification in the world doesn't put\nmore hours in the day, and I eventually<\/span> found this summer that merely doing\nan initial triage on my daily plugin-related email — reading them and\nresponding to the low-hanging fruit — consumed 100% of my hobby\ntime.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a>\nNikon D700 + Nikkor 14-24mm f\/2.8 @ 24 mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>100 sec, f<\/span>\/13, ISO 400 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nReed-Thatched Roofs Look Pretty From a Distance<\/span><\/span>\nbut show their rough nature when viewed up close\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The vast majority of messages I got<\/span> were about problems at best\ntangential to me (e.g. people having general problems with their systems or\nLightroom that happen to affect them while trying to use a plugin,<\/span> or\nproblems at a photo<\/span>-hosting site that they run into while using a plugin<\/span>),\nwhich repeated over and over and over all day, every day, and on the\nbest<\/b> day, my hobby time was completely saturated by email and blog\ncomments that benefit only a relative<\/span> few. Early in the summer I made<\/span> a plugin<\/span> FAQ<\/a> and\nlinked to it from everywhere, but it made no apparent dent in the flow of\nmessages, and all summer, I got no<\/span> new development done. I'm a geeky<\/span>\nengineer and I like<\/i> new development, and so the pleasure was now\ncompletely lost, replaced by an ever-increasing stress that grew with the\nnumber of messages awaiting my response.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a>\nNikon D700 + Nikkor 85mm f\/1.4 — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>4000 sec, f<\/span>\/1.4, ISO 200 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\n( just a pretty<\/span> picture from the same outing as the others )<\/span>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The stress and pressure was taking a toll<\/span> on my life that came\nto a head<\/span> after the added strain of a 21<\/span>-hour trip back to\nKyoto<\/a> and the ensuing jetlag. My body just<\/span> gave out, and I got<\/span> sudden\nintense pains in both arms that made it impossible to use a computer<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

The prospect of never being able to use a computer<\/span> again is a fairly<\/span> big\ndeal to someone like me, especially since the photography I enjoy<\/span> so much\nis now all digital. I gave up<\/span> the computer for a while<\/span> and consulted\na bunch<\/span> of doctors, and it seems that it's just stress-induced muscle\ncramping that can be healed, and thankfully not something irreversible like\ncarpel-tunnel. I've settled on a particular<\/span> sports-massage therapist whose\ntreatments are both expensive and painful, but he clearly knows what he's\ndoing and the prognosis looks good.<\/p>\n\n

But it was a real wake-up call... all this stress and pain for a\nhobby<\/span><\/b>! Something's got to change.<\/p>\n\n

(The photos on this page are from the same outing that also produced\nlast year's “Gate of Disrepair<\/a>” post, which somehow seems\nfitting.)<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/a>\nNikon D700 + Nikkor 85mm f\/1.4 — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>3200 sec, f<\/span>\/1.4, ISO 200 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nLooking For a New<\/span> Path<\/span>\n
Portrait-Mode Desktop-Background Versions<\/b>\n\n\n1050×<\/span>1680<\/a>  ·  1200×<\/span>1920<\/a>  ·  1600×<\/span>2560<\/a><\/small>     <\/span>\n<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

For some, this would be the time to turn it into a business,<\/span> moving to a\nsales<\/span> model, hiring developers and customer-service reps, etc. But I never<\/span>\nwanted to make this a business.<\/span>.. I love Lightroom<\/span> and photography and\nsoftware development, and this is my hobby<\/b>, which is why I've always\nbeen adamant about not selling anything, not having customers.<\/p>\n\n

So my plan is this: once my arms are fully healed, I'm going<\/span> to return\nto what I find<\/span> pleasure in (blogging and plugin development) and more or\nless ignore what I don't<\/span> find pleasure in (dealing with plugin feedback). This\nis either remarkably selfish or long overdue, depending on your point of\nview. I certainly<\/span> don't want to leave people in a lurch,<\/span> so I plan<\/span> to be\nattentive to bugs, but I will<\/span> no longer take the weight of the world on my\nshoulders and feel the need to respond to every request for assistance.<\/p>\n\n

I'm going to flush the hundreds of pending blog comments and emails,\nand will feel free to repeat that process from time to time.<\/p>\n\n

I'm going to return to the pleasurable roots of plugin development.\nTaking this approach benefits me, of course, but it should actually allow\nme to get more stuff done (fix more bugs, add more features, and release\nmore plugins) thereby benefiting many. But if I<\/span> don't respond to your\nmessage, this is why. Sorry.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/a>\nNikon D700 + Nikkor 85mm f\/1.4 — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>1250 sec, f<\/span>\/1.4, ISO 200 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nUnexpected Beauty<\/span>\nAutumn cherry blossoms, as seen in “Cherry Blossoms Amid the Fall Foliage<\/a>”\n
Portrait-Mode Desktop-Background Versions<\/b>\n\n\n1050×<\/span>1680<\/a>  ·  1200×<\/span>1920<\/a>  ·  1600×<\/span>2560<\/a><\/small>     <\/span>\n<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a long post. The executive summary is:<\/p>

The verb \"to scale\" in computer science refers to a solution's ability to handle dramatically increasing demands. Filtering spam by personally inspecting each message, for example, works fine if you get only a few each day, but reaches its limits when you get hundreds a day, and becomes totally unworkable if you got thousands. Personal inspection just doesn't scale to those kinds of numbers, which is why in real life we need a totally different approach, such as automatic filtering as a first line of defense.<\/p>

When I first started writing [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,1,13,25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}