Foreword
The Rock Problem
One of my students summarized the issues discussed in this book as the "rock" problem. She works as a software engineer in a research laboratory, and her customers often give her project assignments that she describes as "Bring me a rock." But when you deliver the rock, the customer looks at it for a moment and says, "Yes, but, actually, what I really wanted was a small blue rock." The delivery of a small blue rock elicits the further request for a spherical small blue rock.
Ultimately, it may turn out that the customer was thinking all along of a small blue marble—or maybe he wasn't sure what he wanted, but a small blue marble—well, perhaps even a cat's eye small blue marble—would have sufficed. And he probably changed ...
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