← People and their mental models
9 claims David Heinemeier Hansson made fit 8 mental models. Most often: Play long games, Bottlenecks, Cheaper means more, not less. Everything they said here.
A longer horizon makes some problems solvable and some short-term wins look like what they are.
Their wordsHumans are rigid in the short term, but flexible in the long term
Their wordsWhat's good for humanity at large in the long run may well be temporarily tragic for the individual in the short run.
A system moves only as fast as its narrowest point; speed up anything else and nothing changes.
Jacob TrefethenAlexandr WangCasey HandmerDylan PatelJensen HuangLip-Bu Tanand 4 more
Open the model pageTheir wordsThe other thing I'd say is that most organizations don't know what they want. They don't know how to make it better. They're not bottlenecked on implementation. They're bottlenecked on ideas. They're bottlenecked on vision. They're bottlenecked on taste. And if you don't have those element in excess of your implementational capacity, it doesn't help. So you can make a lot of shitty ideas come true, then what?
Most growth slows as it matures; the question is whether the curve is flattening or something new is restocking it.
Michael NielsenFrançois CholletGary MarcusIlya SutskeverJason CohenJosé Luis Ricónand 1 more
Open the model pageTheir wordsSo we should also have the humility. As amazing as the LLMs are now, it could be that they eventually plateau. We haven't seen any evidence of it yet, and I think this is also why we're seeing this absolute gobsmacking levels of investment, because so far the scaling laws are true, and the more billions are poured in, the more intelligence comes out.
Make something cheaper to use and people use so much more of it that the total goes up (Jevons paradox).
Their wordsSo, I do think it is correct for the average programmer to think maybe we've seen the best of the golden days.
People stay with what they would not choose again because leaving costs more than staying; watch who sets that cost.
Their wordsAnd maybe you won't get to 100% coverage, but this is the old joke about Microsoft Office. "I only use 5%." Yeah, well, we all use a different 5%. Well, what if we all just build our own 5%? What if I just took the functionality that I need and just did that? That is a completely different challenge and one agents are incredibly capable of doing right now, today, and I've done it a lot of times over.
Build a prototype; it settles arguments a description cannot.
Their wordsDesigners at 37 Signals are not just here to make a spec look pretty. They're here to find what the spec should be. They're product managers in many ways.
Trust the judgment of people who pay for being wrong over people who only comment.
Their wordsWhat I love most about underdogs is how they can't help having something on the line
Fast software feels simple, and waiting makes everything feel complicated.
Their wordsThere's no reason a machine from ten years ago shouldn't fly like superman.