Day #8: Is Everything Defined by Bad Decisions?

There’s an important thing to understand about the chess world. The opportunities available to you are highly dependent on your rating. In chess terms, your ELO. An ELO under 800 is a beginner. Over 2200, a master. In between, that’s where most serious chess players find themselves.

Many aspire to be better. They study openings, tactics and theory to expand their knowledge and equip themselves to make better decisions. While making better decisions will improve your ELO over time, too many intermediate players (myself included) wipe away all those gains in a moment with a single bad move.

In chess, your rating is determined more by your bad moves than your good ones. I’ve played enough chess to know that when I play a good game with no blunders, my projected ELO is in the 1400-1600 range. A solid intermediate player.

I’m past my days of regularly hanging a Queen, but I’ll drop a bishop or a knight due to a mistake.

Then why do I struggle to break 1000 ELO online? The simple answer, I make too many stupid moves. I’m past my days of regularly hanging Queens, but I’ll drop a bishop or a knight due to a mistake. My only hope at that point is for my opponent (whose ELO is usually close to mine) will make a similar blunder and we’ll be even again.

That happens often, but not as often as I’d like.

It Not Just About Chess #

What I’ve recently realized is this lesson applies to much more than just chess. A questionable decision was made this morning in the Sansford household. It was a relatively minor issue over the nutritional value of a particular breakfast meal. It hit me that you can eat properly all day long, or even for several days, then absolutely blow it on the weekend and set yourself back.

It occurred to me that the outcome of our lives is due more to our bad choices than our good ones. You don’t often see a single good choice alter the trajectory of someone’s life. But every day, there’ll be stories in the news of a single bad choice that left someone in ruins. It’s tragic how fast one bad decision can ruin a life. It’s equally amazing how many consistent good decisions need to be made to effect a positive change.

…every day, there’ll be stories in the news of a single bad choice that left someone in ruins.

In life, like in chess, a few bad decisions can overwrite a lifetime of good ones.

How Does This Relate To Coding #

I can’t help now but turn this theory loose on my programming. I can make good decisions about my project. I can properly plan out every step and execute the plan. Not one of these good decisions on their own is likely to affect the future success of the program.

An incorrect decision made anywhere in the process could result in an application that is unusable or unmaintainable in the future.

But how about one bad one? Will that completely derail a project? An incorrect decision made anywhere in the build process could result in an application that is unusable or unmaintainable in the future. Remember Y2k? A decision was made to limit the year code to two digits. Look at the chaos that caused. I will admit that the overall outcome of that incident was underwhelming. I’d hoped for more.

The most interesting issue about this theoretical bad decision is: when does it become a bad decision? I don’t think it started that way. I know I’m new, but I doubt programmers intentionally make bad decisions in their code. The ‘badness’ of the decision won’t come to light until well after the program’s success. Maybe one day I’ll find out.

But it won’t be for at least 92 more days…