How to Ship a Simple Feature in Two Months
I started working on a feature to allow users to remove notebooks in Braindump two months ago. What started as adding an additional link and a corresponding flask endpoint to handle the deletion has turned into a horrible long running branch that I have no idea how to get out of. This is a common trap that I fall into, and I have seen other developers struggle with the same issues.
Scope
Add a Feature to allow users to remove notebooks.Implementation
Easy Peasy, here is a link to delete notebooks. Ship it.Side Tracking
Well, while we are here, maybe we should use the new "card" style that is hip now. Hmm, wait, this looks stupid in purple. Let's make it blue. The cards look great, lets make the rest of the site blue as well. Ok it looks awesome in blue. Have not looked at CSS in a while, maybe we should refactor it, switch to SASS and concatenate all of the CSS into a single file. Oh crap, doing this breaks the outer theme compared to the inner theme since they were defining rules for the same elements. No problem, I will just rewrite the whole UI again.30 commits later
What problem was I trying to solve again?Conclusion
This is actually what happened. No matter how many times I tell myself I will never fall into this trap again, I keep on doing it. Next time will be different. In any case, the new notebook view looks good and allows you to delete notebooks. I hope to have this shipped this year.Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
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Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making from Ludicity
- No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass from Fernando Borretti
- Is it ethical to use AI? from charity.wtf
- The logical destination of LLMs from Andy Bell
- Revised rules of engineering leadership. from Irrational Exuberance
- The circus freaks of open source from Drew DeVault's blog
- Clanker: A Word For The Machine from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
- I ran a half-marathon! from gluecko.se
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Pluralistic: AI solipsists and AI cynics (24 Jul 2026)
Today's links AI solipsists and AI cynics: You don't have to believe that AI "works" to believe that it's a good investment. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Malware v stolen computer; Industrial material made from old coffee and...
via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow July 24, 2026Safari and system design, pt. 2
Around the time I was writing about iPhone’s Safari breaking the expected “tap to jump to the top” gesture, a conversation on social media pointed to yet another thing that this tab control does strangely. A typical use of Safari means two groups of sites:...
via Unsung July 23, 2026Issue 107 – An unserious offer
The crypto industry has spent $200 million to get a bill too corrupt for Democrats to pass and a president too corrupt to sign anything that might meaningfully limit his grift.
via Citation Needed July 23, 2026Generated by openring