Power of Brevity

People like concepts which are presented in small bites. Crisp and crunchy - like pakoras.

In numerous occasions I have felt the power of brevity - keeping the idea short and simple. Will narrate 3 such instances why this is powerful.

1.Committing to Git

You can search in Google - guidelines on writing comments while committing code. We can write pages of instructions on how to write comment - and make a developer memorise it all - but it all boils down to the following concept :

"Say the WHY than the WHAT"

This is what I advise my developers to remember while committing. What we can always find through a diff. But why this change was made is what is important. Imagine the hours of guess work it will save - not to mention the unintentional bugs that could have got introduced if someone reverts a code by mistake.

2.Forum Guidelines

What do you think will form a good forum guideline? You can write lot of dos and dont's - and make the user agree to it. But you think he or she will remember while posting?

I remember signing up for JavaRanch Forum a couple of decades ago. I had to agree to their forum guidelines. It used to say :

"Be Nice"

That's it. That is all one has to remember. No flame wars, no fighting, no calling names - because I have to be nice to everyone in the forum. In fact till this date I practise this even on Social Media. Life is too short to fight these small unnecessary battles. We are here to fight big ones.

3. Company Values

When the time came for ADDA to create values for the company - we looked into a few of the key employees and drew the values from them. And we could form an acronym with it which we could easily disseminate :

"ICE"

Integrity. Collaboration. Excellence.

Easy to remember. Easy to apply. Everyone in ADDA know this and can apply it whenever they are faced with a situation.

Just Do it. Think Different - are some of the iconic ones.

Important messages should be short and sweet. So it can be easily digested and will be remembered at critical instances.

Thanks for reading the few pakoras I cooked :)