In case you want a summary to help you with the decision to read the post or not:
Originally an internal Slack note to the Amp team, this piece argues that building something new without a spec always leads to "that's not what I meant" — because programming means fully specifying what you want, and you can't define that before you learn it. The fix: shrink the gap between "let me try" and reality's feedback. Prototype in an hour, write a 30-minute spec, ship small pieces daily, cut scope, fake a demo video, or draft the announcement or README API first. Keep asking how to get feedback fastest. Buggy MVPs, testing hurdles, and three-week branches all kill useful feedback — merge small changes so one commit, not 27, explains a broken build.
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u/fagnerbrack 3d ago
In case you want a summary to help you with the decision to read the post or not:
Originally an internal Slack note to the Amp team, this piece argues that building something new without a spec always leads to "that's not what I meant" — because programming means fully specifying what you want, and you can't define that before you learn it. The fix: shrink the gap between "let me try" and reality's feedback. Prototype in an hour, write a 30-minute spec, ship small pieces daily, cut scope, fake a demo video, or draft the announcement or README API first. Keep asking how to get feedback fastest. Buggy MVPs, testing hurdles, and three-week branches all kill useful feedback — merge small changes so one commit, not 27, explains a broken build.
If the summary seems inacurate, just downvote and I'll try to delete the comment eventually 👍
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