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← People and their mental models

Hillel Wayne's mental models

3 claims Hillel Wayne made fit 3 mental models. Most often: Feedback loops, Positioning, Trade-offs. Everything they said here.

Models we see in what they say

Our reading: their claim applies the idea without naming it. The claim is theirs; filing it here is ours.

Feedback loops

Shorten the loop between doing and finding out; whatever a loop rewards is what you become.

Used by 60 others

The core tension of all engineering is between how expensive a mistake is and how quickly you can iterate, and that alone decides how much planning a field does.

  1. Hillel Wayne Writer and consultant on formal methods The core tension of engineering is between how expensive it is to make a mistake and how quickly you can iterate. The faster you can iterate, the less planning you need to do before you iterate, and the more expensive it is, the more planning you need to do. Formal methods with Hillel Wayneyoutube.com · 29 Jul 2026 · 0:07:18 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    Their wordsThe core tension of engineering is between how expensive it is to make a mistake and how quickly you can iterate. The faster you can iterate, the less planning you need to do before you iterate, and the more expensive it is, the more planning you need to do.

    Where this was said

    Watch from 0:07:18 plays here

    ↗Formal methods with Hillel Wayneyoutube.com

    29 Jul 2026 · video · 1h 24m · spoken · machine transcript

Positioning

Set up your situation, rules and defaults so the good choice is the easy one, instead of relying on willpower.

Used by 21 others

Programmer discipline is the wrong answer to software defects: the way to reduce them is to change the system so mistakes are harder to make and easier to catch.

  1. Hillel Wayne Writer and consultant on formal methods Rather, the best way to reduce the volume and severity of mistakes is to adjust the system itself. Uncle Bob and Silver Bulletshillelwayne.com · 5 Oct 2017All korrents from this piece
    Their wordsRather, the best way to reduce the volume and severity of mistakes is to adjust the system itself.

    ↗Uncle Bob and Silver Bulletshillelwayne.com

    5 Oct 2017

Trade-offs

Every choice gives something up, so name the cost; and check, because some trade-offs everyone assumes are not real.

Used by 70 others

There is a permanent trade-off in verification: an expressive language is hard to prove things about, and a language that is easy to prove things about is hard to write in.

  1. Hillel Wayne Writer and consultant on formal methods Formal verifiers have a dilemma: the more expressive the language, the harder it is to prove anything in it. But the less expressive the language, the harder it is to write anything in it. Why Don't People Use Formal Methods?hillelwayne.com · 21 Jan 2019All korrents from this piece
    Their wordsFormal verifiers have a dilemma: the more expressive the language, the harder it is to prove anything in it. But the less expressive the language, the harder it is to write anything in it.

    ↗Why Don't People Use Formal Methods?hillelwayne.com

    21 Jan 2019