Faster answers, better questions

Thinking about how programming and product building are being changed by the chatGPT, Cursor, Bolt and the likes:

• When you build dishwashers, 📈 increased speed = increased throughput 📈.

• But software and product development don’t have a fixed output: we’re simultaneously discovering both the solution and refining our understanding of the problem itself. We search through the problem-solution space 🔍.

• It’s an ITERATIVE process: each cycle of building helps clarify the intent, leading to the next cycle.

• ⚡Increasing speed⚡, at first, will accelerate the process, but the path through the problem-solution space is unchanged.

• But when the response time falls below a certain threshold though, the process switches to INTERACTIVE: we stop planning ahead, we get started and let our hands do the thinking. It’s a fundamentally different search strategy (different path, different results) which, I would argue, produces superior results as it requires less assumptions about the problem.

• It feels like it’s what GenAI / CodeGen tools are taking us to interactive land for at least part of the process. Already, building a simple prototype has become a conversation.