Balance is for cowards

Here's a short one.

Every time I hear, in a meeting or otherwise, someone say one of the following...

• It's a delicate balance
• You've gotta balance
• It's a balancing act

I want to flip tables.

When people say they need to balance something, it just means they don't understand it. Worse than not understanding what they are doing, they don't even understand what they are trying to achieve.

If something is just a balancing act then you are choosing the cowards route of shying away from the hairy problem. If you notice yourself reaching for "Balancing" something, stop yourself, and figure out what it is that you don't understand.

There are things that are technically require the equivalent of a PID loop, that actually could be considered a "balancing act" but that's not the right way to describe what's going on.

Let's talk about water. Keeping water liquid isn't a "balancing act" It's keeping it between 0 and 100 C. Specifically those two numbers. So instead of saying "balancing act" just say what your targets are. Unless of course, you don't know what you are talking about, in which case, use the current time to figure out what the upper and lower bounds are.