Build Great Software By Repeatedly Encountering It

Robin in “Vibe driven development” (which I took notes):

the only way to build a great product is to use it every day, to stare at it, to hold it in your hands to feel its lumps. The data and customers will lie to you but the product never will.

Oof. That lands with me.

As a professional, it’s easy to become mired in the boundaries we draw around specialization, discipline, and craft.

For example, “design” is too broad. We need UI design, UX design, service design, visual design, content design, and more. Each comes with its specialities, best practices, rules, and guidelines that demand a role in making software.

I'm not discounting any of that.

But, to Robin's point, there’s something in the simplicity of: you just gotta use the thing, every day, over and over and over.

My brain thinks of it like a rock you want to make smooth. You can discuss how to best smooth its edges, debate what tools will do it best, and so forth.

Or you can be like a river of water that washes over the rock incessantly day after day after day, smoothing over every last rough edge by encountering it over and over and over again.

You can get pretty damn far by incessantly encountering a piece of software over and over, fixing everything you find along the way that doesn’t feel right.