Not much to say on the professional front. I’m enjoying two weeks off, until the new year. I have a bundle of client work lined up for 2021. If you or your employer want the kind of thinking, writing and code work I do, applied to your problems, reach out and we can put something on the calendar a bit into the year.

2020 has been a lot. I became a father and the pandemic didn’t particularly make that easier or optimally fun. Mostly I’m doing well thankfully. Regardless, looking forward to incrementing the year id and moving on.

Deeply worked, not perfect

I have a rant in me about mastery, making masterful creations and how we should aspire higher. But I don’t think that’s where we need to go today.  This is related.

I want to shine a light on the humble concept of something being deeply worked or thoroughly thought through. These are often related because it is hard to work something deeply in a thoughtless manor and it is hard to make a creation from thorough thought alone.

A deeply worked computer setup is probably not a glamorous thing, a deeply worked woodworking bench is almost definitely not fancy or super clean. They have seen use, adaptation and achieved efficiency. Whether simple and effective or precision tweaked just so, the adaptation, effort, think and iteration is what matters for the outcome to feel like more than something simple and dull or something cool but entirely unusable.

A deeply worked website has likely grown beyond its original aspiration and been molded both towards what it needs to be and how its creator wants it to be. The necessary detail has seeped in as needs made it clear what was required. Irrelevant stuff might have been lopped off and unwanted design elements shed like last year’s fur. The message lines up with the content, lines up with the style, lines up with the visuals. It might not be perfect, but it is more than surface deep in both presentation and content.

Something can be deeply worked before being placed into the world. Either because it has been worked until it was polished smooth, because it was built with enormous depth or meticulous attention to detail. Let’s take a few gaming examples: Hades, it takes a fairly common concept of an action-roguelite and then deeply works through the implementation. The dying and starting over is part of the story, it has mechanisms to it that are critical to story progression, there is an unfolding story that spans your attempts. The game is likely not perfect but it is clearly a serious piece of craft. There are very few parts of the game where I feel like they weren’t paying attention or being mindless. I think an aspect of this has rang through for me in all Supergiant Games I’ve played (Bastion, especially Transistor and now Hades).

Another example would be The Witcher 3 from the currently much-controversial company CDPR. The Witcher 3 is technically and visually very nice, has a story I found mostly engaging but where I found it most deeply worked through is just the depth of quests, side-quests and interactions that make the world so very real and weird. The game is immense in scope in both the big and small stuff. You could play the game to an end and blast right past most of it. You shouldn’t.

I’d say Transistor is deeply worked and thoroughly considered with style and restraint where The Witcher 3 would be more maximalist and it has a high technical execution along with a vast creative scope. I’d consider them both deeply worked. Their strengths are very different. But they have multiple strengths, they are not one-trick executions of a neat idea.

So where do I tie this to everyday software development. Well there’s nothing particularly everyday about this topic but it certainly ties into development work. I think you can make something deeply worked without aspiring to master every outer bound of the problem space. There are applications that have a beautiful UI and a neatly scoped feature-set. Not too much, not too little. The experience is the deeply worked part, I think this is sort of an ideal among iOS apps and to some extent Mac apps. Then there is software that is absolutely encyclopedic by how it is created, it is deeply worked with a focus on being exhaustive, or technically capable. I’d throw ffmpeg or VLC in here as examples. I believe we’d all benefit if this was part of how we build things even in business.

It is the thought and effort put into these varied aspects that make the difference between something feeling thrown together, sloppy or uninteresting and that thing feeling delightful, compelling or impressive. You can put a lot of work into something and have it suck. You can put a lot of thought into something without getting anything done. You can put both in and even that might not work but at least then it has a chance.

Fortunately this also means you can succeed with different skillsets and focusing on different aspects of what you do. I enjoy writing, I have an okay eye for design. I like to code. I don’t like simple repetitive tasks, I’m terrible at some kinds of maintenance routines, such as logging information or noting what movies I’ve seen for later reference. I don’t keep good records. I have ability in some areas and I’m hindered in others.

I try to make sure I put thought into my writing. I also try to make sure the things I do maintain a style I like, ideals I like and that the words, visuals and ideas line up after a fashion. I think it is, piece by piece, becoming deeply worked. And certianly the responses I’m getting indicate that whatever notes I’m hitting is creating a certain resonance. It even seems like it might be greater than the sum of its parts. And that is incredibly gratifying.

Take your skills and put them to good work. Let yourself work through it properly. You don’t need perfection. Improvement comes to those who do. You should also put serious effort into most of what you are putting into the world. That way you can look yourself in the mirror, feel good about what you do and even have a hope of delighting people.

I hope this seemed somewhat thought through. If you want to get in touch, just reply or email lars@underjord.io since I am always happy to hear from you.

Thank you for your attention and for reading, I appreciate it.

- Lars Wikman