Dragan Stepanović
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dstepanovic.bsky.social
Dragan Stepanović
@dstepanovic.bsky.social
Trying hard not to think about small batches, bottlenecks, and systems. In the meantime: XP, ToC, Lean, Systems Thinking.

Moved here from that other place for good.
Often, when we reach the step that when discussing a bigger change we initially wouldn't have agreed on, once we got there in smaller steps, it's often not a point of contingency anymore because we realize our assumptions were wrong or that we didn't really understand each other.
November 6, 2025 at 1:19 PM
"No one is going to take you serious if your book is less than 350 pages long"
November 5, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Let me think about it.
Hmmmm...yeah, people will vomit more (even worse) code.
November 4, 2025 at 1:36 PM
That's to say, teams that struggle with refactoring skills are also teams that most likely struggle with design skills, because tapping into a rich pool of domain and design insights generated as you refactor in small, safe steps is out of their reach.

2/2
October 25, 2025 at 4:30 PM
I wanna join!
October 1, 2025 at 12:17 PM
But then I won't have the chance to practice my skills for reverse engineering understanding from the implicit code!
September 30, 2025 at 9:49 AM
Sorry, it was a response to this LinkedIn post, which provides more context.
September 28, 2025 at 12:52 PM
There's a feedback loop that feeds from making the changes to the quality of the mental model of the problem and domain

In doing the work, and if you listen carefully, you get to discover more about the domain and problem that feeds back into the way that you do the work.

2/2
September 27, 2025 at 7:33 PM
So, the point is not reducing the cost per se. It's fixing the problem that the high cost of change pointed at, which in turns dissolves the problem of the high cost.

4/4
September 27, 2025 at 7:09 PM
In a bunch of cases, the high cost of change serves a purpose. It points to a problem, addressing which reduces the cost that was pointing at it.

3/4
September 27, 2025 at 7:09 PM
And my experience tells me that there are a lot of the latter ones that for lots of teams/orgs go under the radar, deferring addressing painful problems for a way longer time than they should.

2/4
September 27, 2025 at 7:09 PM
I can notice the pattern, next talk is "Beyond UUIDs"
September 25, 2025 at 12:05 PM
I heard there's this GOTO conference.
I think it's trying to popularize long forgotten tool of great software designers: GOTO statements.
You should try those as well.

I think SonarQube should also add it to one of their mandatory rules.
September 24, 2025 at 6:21 PM