It’s a lesson I keep having to relearn over and over again.
I’m laying out the redesign/refactor of my MusicComposer object in From Audio Chaos to Actual Music, and realized yesterday I was designing with the destination in mind.
This makes intuitive sense, designing with the destination in mind- but I keep getting burned when I focus too much on the destination.
Design from your starting point, not from your end goal.
Take what you currently have, and iterate its design to be one step closer to the destination.
There’s a couple real benefits from focusing this way.
First, you get much more clarity of design.
Your final design is always fuzzy, an expectation of a reality that might be.
Where your project is now is the reality, and iterating what’s real is much easier than pontificating a perfect end-goal.
The other reason is that it actually shapes the final design.
The method by which you step towards your goals can actually change your goals.
By iterating on what you currently have, you reveal possibilities you hadn’t actually considered, often through paths of much less resistance.
And I think that’s the real benefit of starting with what you currently have. It’s much easier to find the path of least resistance.
Code is hard, design is hard. Anything that makes it less hard should be real focus.