> People employ checklists precisely in the situations where it is most critical that every step be executed
I am not arguing against checklists per se. At work, I work on (a rather old) software product which also largely runs on checklists. (Various installation and maintenance procedures are described by a checklist.)
> Now, you're letting perfect prevent you from ever attempting the good.
No. I just, based on my experience with checklists, argue that they are often poor starting point. Often they rely on abilities of humans to execute them properly.
For example, the checklist might read "edit this text file and add this and this line after line that is like this". This is difficult to automate correctly - the proper way might be perhaps to generate or keep a correct copy of the text file so automation can pick it up.
Humans are good at adapting checklists for the purpose at hand, computers aren't. That makes (human-oriented) checklists somewhat difficult to automate.
I am not arguing against checklists per se. At work, I work on (a rather old) software product which also largely runs on checklists. (Various installation and maintenance procedures are described by a checklist.)
> Now, you're letting perfect prevent you from ever attempting the good.
No. I just, based on my experience with checklists, argue that they are often poor starting point. Often they rely on abilities of humans to execute them properly.
For example, the checklist might read "edit this text file and add this and this line after line that is like this". This is difficult to automate correctly - the proper way might be perhaps to generate or keep a correct copy of the text file so automation can pick it up.
Humans are good at adapting checklists for the purpose at hand, computers aren't. That makes (human-oriented) checklists somewhat difficult to automate.