There are two wolves inside you…
My Builder side won’t let me just sit and think about unsolved problems, and my Thinker side is starving while I vibe-code. I am not sure if there will ever be a time again when both needs can be met at once.
The mathematics behind the halting problem is interesting enough, but what’s really fascinating is the community that coalesced. A republic of numbers.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some features under the mislabeled bracket of AI that have made a huge impact and improvement to my process. Audio transcription has been an absolute game-changer to research analysis, reimbursing me hours of time to focus on the deep thinking work. This is a perfect example of a problem seeking a solution, not the other way around. The latest wave of features feel a lot like because we can rather than we should, because.
This is a wonderful piece of writing by Marcin, ostensibly about bug-fixing but really an almost existential examination of the nature of coding.
Bugs are, by definition, a look backward—at past behavior, at code that already exists, at the old work of engineers whom you’ve never met. It can feel more fun to write new code, chart new territories, add new functionality.
But the past can be fun, too. A good bug is a puzzle. A mystery. A whodunit. To solve a bug, sometimes you have to be a scientist: observe and measure, chart out the logic, follow the math. But then, two minutes later, you need to wear a hat of a very particular detective—take your flip notepad and interview different pieces of code to understand not what they claim they do, but what they actually do.
Rationality does not work for ethical decisions. It can help you determine means, “what’s the best way to do this” but it can’t determine ends.
It isn’t even that great for means.
A great tool is not a universal tool it’s a tool well suited to a specific problem.
The more universal a solution someone claims to have to whatever software engineering problem exists, and the more confident they are that it is a fully generalized solution, the more you should question them.
I don’t agree with all of the mythbusting in this litany of life lessons, but this one is spot on:
The best thing that can be done to a problem is to solve it. False. The best thing that can be done to a problem is to dissolve it, to redesign the entity that has it or its environment so as to eliminate the problem.
Remember that next time you’re tempted to solve a problem by throwing more code at it.
Before the hagiographical praise for working with an iPad Pro, Robin nails the fundamental shape of the design process:
I had forgotten that there are two modes of design, just as there is in writing.
The first mode is understanding the problem, getting a ten-thousand foot view of the land. It’s getting people to acknowledge that this really is the problem we need to agree upon. This work needs to happen in a sketchbook in the form of messy, back-of-the-napkin drawings or in writing. All this helps you to form a proper argument and focus your thoughts.
The second mode of design is taking that ten-thousand foot view and zooming all the way in to the hairs on the back of the rabbit; figuring out the precise UI and components, the copywriting, the animations, the everything else. This should be done in a design tool like Figma or Sketch. And this is when we should be talking about color palettes, icons, design systems, and consistency.
The problem with almost all design work is that first phase never really happens. People don’t take that ten thousand foot view of the problem and are focusing instead on the pixels; they’re trapped by the system they know too well.
Yes, yes, yes! Spot on:
I think people get stuck in that second mode because productivity in design is often tied to “how many pages or frames did I design today?” when productivity should instead be thought of as “how did my understanding of the problem change?
- Is this really a problem?
- Does the problem need to be solved?
- Does the problem need to be solved now?
- Does the problem need to be solved by me?
- Is there a simpler problem I can solve instead?
I understand less than half of this great talk by Meredith L. Patterson, but it ticks all my boxes: Leibniz, Turing, Borges, and Postel’s Law.
(via Tim Berners-Lee)