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Comment by john-tells-all | Hacker News Reader

Strongly agree.

Design Workflow:

- spend little time making a couple design decisions -- lots of handwaving and "we'll figure it out"

- bind these decisions, then write a tiny app to see what it looks like. What are the technical consequences? What are the business consequences (including risks)? How does this affect development?

- repeat 2-4x. The goal is to maximize speed of feedback, at the cost of minimal scope and low quality. That's fine.

- iterate more, expanding the scope and quality as needed

- you're done!

Use high-level diagrams to help focus the effort. This dramatically helps discussions with stakeholders and developers.

Source: writing a book on feedback loops

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What you are describing is (to me) the pure essence of what it means to be an artist. There are a lot of days where I feel like software and systems engineering is more about creativity than it is math and science.

Try things, take risks, etc. The really amazing thing with software is that the cost of iteration is basically zero (+ your time). You don't even have to go buy new paints or brushes periodically. You can reset your digital canvas a billion times per day if you desire. You can even cheat and set waypoints in time that allow you to instantly teleport to any arbitrary moment with perfect recall. You can create infinite copies of your work at various stages. You can trivially blend your works together. There is no other media on earth that comes close to possessing these same attributes.

One could also argue that this continuous feedback loop is the scientific process in action.

Absolutely. [I'm also an artist]

I find Developers like to have a specific Goal, then explore the space towards it. An Artist does the opposite: they make random marks and explore the marks that they "like".

Art iteration is also almost free. In fact, the "cost" of physical media (pencils and paper) helps the human brain understand and integrate what it's learning, vs digital is harder for ideas to stick.

Developers could gain by doing the same thing as artists: do random things to gain knowledge, then create a Goal and work towards it.

Recommend checking out Lynda Barry, who's written multiple books helping students unleash their creativity -- exercise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtb2M2SmeuA

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