Second article about building fika. In this one, I'm going to review the napkin math behind it

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Over the past two decades, there has been a shift in software engineering from rigorous planning to rapidly shipping products without much foresight. While agile methodologies have benefited the tech industry, there's a growing concern that the pendulum may have swung too far, leading to a disregard for basic engineering principles. The post emphasizes the importance of using simple tools like napkin math and Fermi problems for making informed decisions, ultimately saving time and resources. By sharing examples from the development of fika, the author illustrates how basic calculations can prevent costly mistakes and optimize development processes.

Fear of over-engineering has killed engineering altogether

I think that what’s making things worst isn’t “fear of over-engineering”, but stakeholders and startup culture.
They want us to deliver things in no viable time, so we don’t even have time to engineering something, imagine over-engineering it.

the biggest problem is that perceived speed is not equal to actual speed.
Fast perceived speed means many releases, developed quickly. Actual speed in this case means countless amount of bugs, data being incorrectly saved and altered because of these bugs, causing huge amounts of maintenance that actually, in the end, slow the whole company down. I’ve literally seen companies go bankrupt because of this. Finding the perfect balance is impossible, but going extreme in either way is definetly, 100%, always bad. No matter how good the devs or managers are.

I think it’s less the fear of over-engineering but more poorly designed education and OHSA type organizations. Bear with me.
When impossible structures in history were made, often they were made by (in modern terms) uneducated engineers. They succeeded because nobody was there to tell them they would fail. Today, engineers are taught to prioritize what they’re told is possible and only incrementally improve what is already designed.
This is why, for decades we thought 1000hp in a production car was impossible. Then Bugatti did it. Now you get over 1000hp cars all over the place.
The health and safety madness makes it worse: a clueless neckbeard in a high vis jacket (who has no real knowledge of what he is assessing) must be consulted before proceeding at all times.
TLDR; It is only impossible until it is done; then it is normal. Until its normal, the health and safety neckbeards will stop you at all corners.