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Gold Plating

6 min read

The Crime Scene

commit d4295c781824413b8cf50d34da0c988db4fecc9e
Date:   Sat May 23 21:43:19 2026 +0330

    Chrono-cide — the felony I just committed.

 new.zsh | 328 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---------------
 1 file changed, 228 insertions(+), 100 deletions(-)

I had a small script that did the boilerplate work of publishing a new post on my blog. For some reason, I turned it into an interactive tool with fzf‑powered create/edit, dynamic index row updates, dependency checks, and confirmation prompts.

The old script worked. The new one saves me maybe 30 seconds per edit.
I edit a post no more than once every three months. So break‑even would be sometime around 2036, assuming I keep blogging until then…

But why?

The Real Purchase

What we buy with the hours we spend perfecting things.

Can’t sell Have bought
Faster editing workflow Hands‑on experience with fzf --print-query, awk state machines, sed escaping footguns
A polished tool A visceral lesson in premature abstraction and practicing the courage to roll back (from a monster upsert function to separate insert and update)
Efficiency The discovery that AI won’t save you if your functions are a tangled procedural mess—you still have to do the structural thinking
Time saved A script I’m proud to look at, which made me a little happier, in the same way reorganising my kitchen for 3 days did

Build Tools vs. Do the Thing

The perfect’s ROI is not the perfect ROI

Is the time I spend building/improving this system going to return more value than I put in, and does that value actually matter? Value here could be time saved, friction removed, joy gained, or skills built. but you must weigh them consciously.

Intent Telltale What to do
Pure utility I will do this task 50+ times, and each improvement saves X minutes. Timebox. Ship 80% of value with 20% of effort.
Learning I always wanted to have X in my fingers and I feel for it now. Learning budget. 2–4 hours. Wrap up after hitting the learning goal.
Craftsmanship / Joy I want one long beautiful shell script for once. This makes me happy. Admit it upfront. Say: I am gold‑plating this for the joy of it. It’s not efficiency; its art. Then do it guilt‑free.
Procrastination disguised as tooling I should write a post, but first let me quickly optimise the deployment pipeline… The litmus test: if the tool vanished tomorrow, would you rebuild it or just do the core task?

Rule of thumb: How many times have I done this boring thing during the past week.

Begin with the closing comment

For software engineers: write the commit message before a single line of code.

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey asks the reader to imagine their own funeral.

What would you like each speaker to say about you? About your contributions? About the difference you made?

Then he says:

Begin with that end in mind. Live backward from that funeral.

I think what he meant is that we should define the desired outcome so clearly that today’s actions become obvious.

For a shell script, the “funeral” is the release notes.

If I were to begin this improvement with the closing comment it would have been something like:

Made editing posts easier.

And the 80-20 solution would be:

To have the script give me the formatted modification date and new word count after updating a post so that I can manually update the index file instantly.

That’s it. 20m, max. Everything else—fzf browsing, confirmation prompts, index row atomic updates—would be scope creep. Of course I could then add the fzf and all but only with the disclaimer that I’m doing it for the fun of it.

Decision Tree

+----------------------------+
| Something feels too boring |
+----------------------------+
              |
              v
 +-------------------------+
 | "I should improve X."   |
 +-------------------------+
             |
             v
   +------------------------+
   | If the improvement     |
   | disappears, would I do |
   | it again?              |
   +------------------------+
        |            |
       No           Yes
        |            |
        v            v
   +---------+  +---------------------+
   | Stop.   |  | Write the closing   |
   | Keep it |  | comment and Imagine |
   | manual  |  | the 80-20 solution  |
   +---------+  | in 5m. Build That.  |
                +---------------------+
                            |
                            v
                +-----------------------+
                | Still want to polish? |
                +-----------------------+
                     |           |
                    No          Yes
                     |           |
                     v           v 
                  +------+   +----------------------+
                  | Ship |   | Admit it's art.      |
                  +------+   | Set a joy budget.    |
                             | Enjoy it guilt-free. | 
                             +----------------------+

If the polishing takes more than your joy budget, ask:

Am I avoiding something?

Perfection beyond tooling

Early winter last year, I spend three full days reorganising my kitchen. Was it worth it? I don’t know. But I feel a touch happier every time I open a drawer since. It is as if I’ve annexed the kitchen to “My corner of the world”.

Crafting one’s environment is a legitimate human need.

The danger is letting it become a substitute for the thing the environment is meant to support. The kitchen exists to cook meals. The blog engine exists to publish thoughts. If you have no meals and no posts, the beautiful environment is just a museum of your procrastination.

The meta‑skill is not

Never waste time.

It’s

Be mindful of the why behind what you do.

Aphorisms For Your Monitor

If you wanted to tape something to your monitor: - Have the courage to roll back. Listen to your aesthetic judgment; it’s usually right. - Find the 80-20 solution. It might look boring but it’s there somewhere. - Never automate something you haven’t done manually a handful of times. - Joy is a valid ROI, but you must name it joy, not efficiency. - Start with the closing notes. Have them say you always saw this coming in your funeral!

The closing comments

Would I redo the revision if it was gone?

hell no.

Do I regret writing it?

Not really.

Because having written a clean gold-plated shell is no longer merely an expression of my can-do spirit — but also a confession that earns a spirit in never-have-I-ever.

Now I have - A script I’m secretly proud of. - A framework for the next time I feel that itch. - And, most importantly, I just committed a post that began with it’s ending punchline.

See also: BLUF, Pyramid Principle

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