korrents

← People and their mental models

Nelson Elhage's mental models

3 claims Nelson Elhage made fit 3 mental models. Most often: Bottlenecks, The map is not the territory, Value moves to what stays scarce. 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.

Bottlenecks

A system moves only as fast as its narrowest point; speed up anything else and nothing changes.

Used by 88 others

AI tooling and interface design lags behind the underlying models' actual capabilities.

  1. Nelson Elhage Software engineer who writes the blog Made of Bugs about performance Overall, though, this experience reinforced my belief that the tooling and interface design around LLMs is lagging way behind the actual capabilities, and is an area of active experimentation and development, even aside from any future model improvements. Building personal software with Claudeblog.nelhage.com · 27 Jan 2025All korrents from this piece
    Their wordsOverall, though, this experience reinforced my belief that the tooling and interface design around LLMs is lagging way behind the actual capabilities, and is an area of active experimentation and development, even aside from any future model improvements.

    ↗Building personal software with Claudeblog.nelhage.com

    27 Jan 2025

The map is not the territory

Every model, word or plan is a simplified map of reality; useful when its structure matches, misleading when mistaken for the thing itself.

Used by 55 others

Profilers show where time is spent but not which of that time can feasibly be reduced or is worth optimizing.

  1. Nelson Elhage Software engineer who writes the blog Made of Bugs about performance Profilers can only show you "what is there"; skillful performance engineering requires understanding the information that shapes and informs the profile but is "not there" in the profile itself. Performance engineering, profilers, and seeing the invisibleblog.nelhage.com · 18 Dec 2023All korrents from this piece
    Their wordsProfilers can only show you "what is there"; skillful performance engineering requires understanding the information that shapes and informs the profile but is "not there" in the profile itself.

    ↗Performance engineering, profilers, and seeing the invisibleblog.nelhage.com

    18 Dec 2023

Value moves to what stays scarce

When something becomes cheap and plentiful, the value moves to whatever is still rare next to it.

Used by 59 others

As AI makes code cheaper to produce, understanding and architectural design become more valuable.

  1. Nelson Elhage Software engineer who writes the blog Made of Bugs about performance Thus, code is cheaper than ever, but I suspect that insight and good architectural design and understanding, at least for now, will become more valuable than ever. Building personal software with Claudeblog.nelhage.com · 27 Jan 2025All korrents from this piece
    Their wordsThus, code is cheaper than ever, but I suspect that insight and good architectural design and understanding, at least for now, will become more valuable than ever.

    ↗Building personal software with Claudeblog.nelhage.com

    27 Jan 2025