Early Optimization Syndrome

I've always wanted to blog about political stuff but never got much time on it. But lately, I kinda observe lots of happenings in our land. Btw, if you don't know I'm a Filipino. We had lots of bad happenings. From the past, we don't have good image from outside the Philippines. Corruption, crime you name it. Anyway, I just notice something about our president. He has this sickness I call "Early Optimization Syndrome".

I'm what they call one of the developers. So basically an IT guy. I know IT guys experienced this kind of stuff. We optimize early in our development. And later on, things get worse because of the complexity. I notice this happens in the management of our administration. They optimize early.

Problems and Solutions

I just want to enumerate some things I notice about their management where they are solving problems (if it is) with optimized solutions.

No Wang-wang Policy

I remember upon taking a nation address speech, he had this. A solution to a non-problem. Maybe he is weird, maybe he is Steve Jobs in disguise. A visionary or some kind. But come on, we know it's never a solution to a problem. There is not even a problem.

Changes to Money

For what? Faking it? Who's faking it? And how? That might be the good questions they should start thinking over. It's like giving a system to a customer and the customer complains because of bugs and all you would do is say, "Nah, nevermind we'll create another one for you." It's expensive process. Instead work on why it doesn't work.

Again, I don't see a problem to the money we previously had. Aside from the people in there to have their pictures taken like they were 30 years old or above. And for Chr**t's sake they look cooler now taken when they were like adolescent ages. I can assure you they'll post it in their facebook accounts if they have that pics.

Receipt Printer for Taxis

I can't see a problem to this. Now, there maybe some kind of stuff like reimbursement by some call center agents having to ride a taxi in the middle of night to go home or office. But I really don't see it a problem, they have taxi allowance anyway. Now of 90 million Filipino people, not a single one of it thought of having a receipt printers for taxi. Again, as I said maybe he's a visionary but I don't see it as changing the world. Might as well have receipt printers or POS for tempura vendors eh?

Conclusion

Maybe I'm just dumb because I don't seem to understand the full of it. But I'm thinking practically. There are lots of problems that needs to be solved. These problems need to be solved immediately, effectively and efficiently. If they can't see it or just pretending to be blind I can at least name poverty as one of the problems. They need to focus to give a good solution. As the saying goes,

"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking". 

they need to think over what the problems are and give solutions. They shouldn't waste time on optimizing early.

Again, maybe I just don't know politics and the science of it but in real world, IT guys act and we act fast. We don't optimize early, we tend to solve real problems. Being agile is a good thing in our industry and I think it still applies in politics.