We never know what's good news

🐴 The night that Hash Code crashed, the runaway horse, good news vs bad news is not a useful question

In 2015, the scoring system for Hash Code, a team programming event I was organizing, crashed under the load.

The night that Hash Code crashed

In a critical moment of the competition, many teams weren’t able to submit a solution.

I felt terrible that night.

But thanks to this, we later rewrote the scoring system from the ground up with scalability in mind. The new version served as well for 7 subsequent years, helping the competition grow from one thousand to 100+ thousand participants.

The runaway horse

Here’s a tiny fable from “The way of a peaceful warrior”.

A farmer had only one horse. One day, the horse ran away. A neighbor came around and said: what terrible news. The farmer replied: we will see.

The next day the horse came back, leading a pack of wild horses. The farmer captured them and now he had many horses. The neighbor said: What great news! The farmer replied: we will see.

The next day one of the wild horses kicked the farmer’s son and broke his leg. The neighbor said: What terrible news! The farmer replied: we will see.

Then a war broke out and every young man in the countryside was drafted. The farmer’s son was spared, because his leg was broken.

And so it goes.

Conclusion

We never know what’s good news.

In fact, whether something is good news or not is not a useful question.

Things are what they are, in all their complexities and unexpected consequences.

Faced with a setback, a better question is this: what do we do now?

Postcard from Paris

A little (sub)urban exploration adventure last weekend 💫.

Keep going,
– Przemek