The Mundanity of Excellence, Small Wins, and Why You Should Fix Bugs Before Writing New Features

The post argues that software quality works like athletic excellence in Chambliss’s essay: it comes from many small skills and details that are practiced, locked in, and kept working together. For software, that means better processes, shorter feedback loops, higher coding standards, and giving bug fixes priority over new features.

It says complex software no longer improves through big wins. Small details like tooltips, shortcuts, customization, performance, and edge cases are what move software from merely working to being pleasant to use, but those details are also the first to erode. The author says this is why bugs should be fixed immediately, and why tests help but do not remove the need to stop and repair broken things.

Reading notes

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• Excellence is presented as the result of many small skills or activities that are learned, drilled into habit, and fitted together.
• The same logic is applied to software: good software depends on many small wins being locked in.
• The author points to better processes, more tests, more code review, no broken builds, and shorter feedback loops.
• Another practice is to raise standards for code that gets pushed, especially when correctness is not easy to see.
• Bug fixes are treated as a priority, not as something to do later when there is free time.
• As software grows more complex, progress comes from lots of small improvements rather than big wins.
• Tooltips, shortcuts, customization, responsive performance, and correct handling of edge cases are given as examples of these small improvements.
• These details are described as the things that make software feel like it works well and is pleasant to work in.
• If they are not kept working, software drifts back toward lower quality.
• The post says many organizations use excuses like lack of time, manpower, or being behind schedule.
• The author calls this a capability trap and says bad practices create the lack of time.
• Automated tests are described as necessary past a certain level of complexity, but not enough to catch everything.
• The article quotes Blizzard and id Software to support the idea that polish must happen throughout development and that bugs should be fixed as soon as they are found.
• The closing summary restates the point by adapting Chambliss’s quote to software and saying that excellence comes from many small polished features held together by tests.