Pursuit
Trying new tech
I poke at new tools by building something small and slightly too ambitious with them, on the theory that you cannot evaluate a tool from its documentation.
What it is
The method is simple and slightly unfair to the tool. Pick something you actually want to exist, make it a bit harder than the tutorials cover, and try to finish it. The mahjong guide exists because of this habit.
The unfairness is deliberate. Documentation describes the path the authors intended. What I want to know is what happens just off that path, because that is where I will spend most of my time if I adopt the thing.
Why it holds me
Most attempts do not survive, which is the point — the fast, cheap failure is the finding. A tool that collapses when you ask it something slightly unusual has told you something important in an afternoon, at no cost.
The ones that do survive teach a different lesson. Usually the tool turned out to be for something other than what it was marketed as, and the interesting use was two steps away from the advertised one.
The point
What it taught me that transfers
- You cannot evaluate a tool from its documentation. Documentation describes the intended path; adoption happens off it.
- A failed prototype is a finding, provided it was cheap enough that failing was affordable. Making it cheap is the actual skill.
- Build the thing you want to exist rather than the tutorial project. Motivation is a real resource and the tutorial project spends none of it.
Beginning
Where to start if you are curious
Pick something with a clear finish line and a real user, even if the user is you. Open-ended exploration produces a lot of half-built things and very little judgement about the tool.