Well, since I was a kid, I loved to play video games. Started with Mega Drive, playing Sonic. Then my brother earned a PlayStation, I loved to play "Crash Bandicoot". The consoles generation were evolving and I followed until Xbox 360.
I don't play video games anymore.
I was thinking about that and realized that I don't miss it, but I didn't loose that feeling and I know why that happens.
What I liked on video games was to complete missions, achieve the best results possible.
Do you know those kind of games that you can finish doing about 70 percent of you could do on the game stages? To achieve 100 percent of completion, you needed to do some side tasks, take all the gold coins scattered through the stage, and things like that.
I was the kind of player that wished to reach 100 percent of completion. It wasn't always possible (after all, sometimes it's so difficult and time consuming that it doesn't worth it), but I was always trying to make it.
I reach those feelings I felt playing video games while developing software.
Whenever a suite of unit tests passes, a request of a Rest API I implemented works, the Stakeholders' feed-backs are positive, it's like completing a video game stage, defeating a boss, winning the game.
It's so satisfying...
Also, I don't aim to achieve 70 percent completion, that is, delivering a feature that works in a functional way. I want 100 percent. I want the cleanest code, the most secure level, the best performance possible. But by the same way I used to think while playing, sometimes it doesn't worth the effort and time consumed to achieve this.
I have in mind things like time-to-market, agility and generating value for company in order to decide when it's worth waste more time trying to achieve 100 percent.
Does it makes sense for you?
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