the healthy, the cheap, and the tasty

This is my take on the "good, fast, cheap--pick two" aphorism. I see healthy, cheap, and tasty as the real trichotomy. And usually, you can only pick one.

Most software developers have heard the "good, fast, cheap" adage millions of times. Supposedly, you can write good and fast software, or fast and cheap software, or cheap and good software, but you cannot write good, fast, and cheap software. It helps us remember that there are trade-offs for every decision. It immediately rings true, even if it's probably more of a cute saying than a useful saying.

On the other hand, every day I find myself choosing between the healthy item on a menu, the cheap item on a menu, and the tasty item on a menu. They are always three different items. Most of the time when I'm by myself I try to choose between the healthy and the cheap items. When I'm with friends for some reason I figure that I'm supposed to be having fun and I usually choose the tastiest item.

More generally, healthy represents the long-term vision. Tasty represents the short-term vision. And cheap represents the most efficient vision regardless of time. You could say that any two of these things has something in common. Most decisions probably have a little bit of all three of these, but I notice that you can only worship one at a time. The gods will know which one you are worshipping at any given time.

This metaphor can apply to almost any decision-making process. Buying a house, choosing a job, relationships, choosing what to do with a free evening, and of course, choosing what to eat at a restaurant. And I think because there are 3 options, and all three of them could in some ways be labelled "good", I think it's difficult to remember that the decisions actually involve this many dimensions. Most of us like to scale down to a decision along 1 dimension. We just say "best". What's the best thing on the menu? What's the best movie out right now? What's the best book you've read in the last 12 months. Because of the ambiguity and multi-dimensionality of "best" endless confusion and conflicting opinions results and we don't know why. Except now we do. Though, don't worry, we'll forget in a few.

Comments

[Erik Lam]

Erik -

glad to see another guy with the same spelling of our first name.

listen, i'm doing this project on innovation and came across your old entry on how you won the just do it awards at amazon - for creating the 1-click feature? just wondering what sort of other inventions/innovations were awarded the Nike Shoe?

Thanks so much - much appreciated.
Erik

[Erik Benson]

Hey Erik. I didn't get it for the 1-click thing, that was a bit before my time. Rather, I got one for some internal work, and another for the Page You Made. What kind of project are you working on?

[John Holycrow]

Re the ambiguity of "good":
In the software-authoring context
this usually means "works good"
like a poem, or "meets or exceeds specs"
like in engineering. As a poet and software
developer (going back to punch-cards
in the early sixties), I've also subscribed to
"looks good" structure layout formatting
design readability maintainability.

Anyway, because "good" is universal pervasive
ubiquitous the trichotomy collapses into
simply time and money.

The difficult I'll do right now,
the impossible will take a little while.