The Parable of the Tower of Babel,
or How "Two Days" Destroyed a Skyscraper
๐ ด ๐๐พ ๐ฆ๐๐ ๐ญ๐ ๐ฌ๐ ๐๐ ๐ ๐ ด ๐ช๐๐ ๐๐ฏ ๐ก๐ช ๐ญ๐ ๐ก๐๐
eme gi-na maลก-ลกuโ-a an-ลกeโ kalag-ga duโ-uโ-da eme kurโ-ri-a ฤeลก-แธซur nu-zu an-ลกeโ nu-duโ-da
When language has measure โ they build strong to heaven.
When language is strange and the plan unknown โ they do not build to heaven.
1. The Assembly
In the days when people still believed in deadlines, three gathered in the land of Silicon. Among them was a Developer who could see through code, an Investor whose ears were tuned to the sound of coins, and a Founder whose gaze stretched to the horizon.
2. The Vision
And the Founder said: "Let us build a tower to the heavens, to change the world and capture the market. And we shall call it the Unicorn." And this word was pleasing to all.
3. The Promise
And the Developer raised his hand and said: "I will build the foundation. It's simple. Two days." And the Investor wrote in his book: "MVP in two days. The market awaits." And the Founder immediately drew a roadmap where the tower already touched the clouds.
4. The Misunderstanding
But no one asked: what does "two days" mean? For the Developer it meant: "If I don't eat, don't sleep, and never encounter a bug I haven't seen before." For the Investor: "Faster than the competitors can blink." For the Founder: "I'm already writing the press release."
5. The Second Day
On the second day the Investor came and saw the foundation was not ready. "You said two days!" he exclaimed. "Yes," answered the Developer, "but I didn't know that beneath the ground lay the technical debt of all previous civilizations." And the Investor departed in sorrow to recalculate the risks.
6. The Beautiful Tower
The Founder arrived and said: "Make it beautiful. Like Apple, only better." And the Developer added fog animation, transparent buttons, and a font no one could read. For "beautiful" to the Developer meant "complex, fragile, and animated at 60 fps." To the Founder โ "so the user weeps with delight." To the Investor โ "three more months of development."
7. The Agile Confusion
And they began to argue in the language of Agile. But each understood Agile differently. The Developer thought Agile meant you could change everything every day. The Investor thought Agile meant the product appeared immediately after the checkpoint. The Founder thought Agile meant he could say "just one more feature" and no one would ask "how much does it cost?"
8. The Tower That Grew
A month passed. The tower grew. Or rather, the documentation grew. And the tests for the documentation. And the bugs for the tests. And the meetings about the bugs. And the slides for the meetings. While the tower itself stood tilted, like a drunken giant.
9. The Fatal Word
Then the Investor uttered the fatal word: "Scale up." The Developer heard "hire more people" and summoned a horde of juniors. The Founder heard "enter new markets" and began negotiations with Mars. The tower cracked.
10. The Appearance
And at that moment, in the corner of the coworking space where no one expected to find truth, a screen lit up. There was no logo, no slogan โ only four input fields and a quiet voice resembling the sound of a calculator: "Let us translate your words into numbers."
11. The Instrument
It was the Digital Polygraph โ not a god, not a prophet, but an engineer with a ruler who had grown tired of fairy tales. And it asked: "'Two days' โ what is the actual effort in person-days? What specific functions must your software perform? What complexity group does the system belong to? What additional characteristics make development harder? Which stages will you follow โ technical assignment, preliminary design, technical design, working design, implementation, or combined techno-working design? How many developers per stage? What is the working time fund? Only after that can we tell you how much your tower truly costs and when it can be built."
12. The Resistance
At first they rebelled. The Developer cried: "You are killing the magic of creativity!" The Investor frowned: "Where is the ROI on this calculator?" The Founder suspected the Polygraph was a competitor's spy.
13. The Miracle
But when they forced themselves to answer its questions, a miracle occurred. For the first time, the Developer, the Investor, and the Founder saw the same number. And that number was understandable to each of them. And their language was no longer confused.
14. The Tower Rebuilt
The tower, of course, had to be rebuilt. It was delivered three months later than the press release had promised. But everyone knew why. And no one lied about the timeline. And this was the first time.
15. The Name
And they gave the Digital Polygraph the name it bears to this day: "The One Who Restores Weight to Words." For from that time forward, "two days" meant forty-eight hours, and not "perhaps in a month."
So may your language no longer be confused when you speak of deadlines and money.