I work with a bunch of colours. Okay, maybe not strictly speaking, but for the purposes of providing a vague form of anonymity, assume it's the case. It's only vague anonymity because of the guys I work with who actually visit this site there's no one I'd have problem discussing this face to face with. In fact I'm pretty sure most of them already know my position on this.

But I digress. Let's get back to those colours, specifically Mr Blue and Mr Green. Other colours may wander onto the scene as I write this (it's largely unplanned at this point).

Mr Blue and I spent a chunk of time talking about a particular issue today. It related to how we manage our software and it's been kicked around the room a few times in the past. It's a Hard Problem^TM and like all such problems there doesn't appear to be an obvious win. We have a few options on the table, but regardless of which option we choose we're always going to have to give something up. So this becomes an optimization problem: give up as little as possible while gaining as much as possible.

It's actually only a small part of a larger problem in a similar vein. We've kicked that one around for some time too and have even about-faced in the recent past because after some time trialing our chosen approach it was clear it wasn't working.

Which brings me to Mr Green. When we first started discussing the latter (larger) problem Mr Green proposed an approach. In retrospect that idea turned out to be roughly on the mark. Now, there's no way to say this so that I don't sound bitter so I'm just going to say it: it grates me because his original reasoning was unsound. Or rather unsoundable: it was extremely shallow and I don't really feel that he had the requisite experience with, or understanding of, this particular problem domain. And of course his response to our about-face was "I didn't want to say I told you so, but ..."

So now, were facing with another possible change in direction. And this one relates to something he's spent a lot of time bitching about in recent history. And rather than feeling pleased that we have an option which might actually be all-win-no-loss I'm grating because he's going to drop another "I told you so" into the conversation. And I'd be fine with that if I believed there was even a remote chance that he actually understands why it's an appropriate solution.

It's like multiple choice questions. Individually they mean nothing. Having the right answer without providing reasoning to back it up means nothing until you have the right answer a hundred times, at which point I'd be inclined to trust your gut. A single essay question, on the other hand, usually stands alone because you have to back up what you're saying with some actual reasoning.

Perhaps it's a small thing. But it gets up my nose and I haven't had enough sleep in the past 48 hours so I reserve the right to be cranky and somewhat less tolerant than I might otherwise be.