In Randy Pausch’s last lecture he talks about the benefit of brick walls in our lives - they tell us how much we really want something. Software development is full of these brick walls - things we want to do, but there’s a barrier to achieving it. Will we persevere and accomplish the thing, give up, or some other compromise.

In heroic tales, the protagonist overcomes all obstacles to achieve the goal. In life and especially in software development, that’s not always the smart thing to do - to stubbornly invest in an outcome, often disproportionately to the benefit. Here’s my brick walls from today.