We can build harder things now

Draft

Claude and I wrote this together, and it still needs further refinement (and more time next to the sea).

Natasha used a free limit reset with 30 hours to go before her weekly one, threw all her out-there ideas at Claude in parallel, and wrote about how it felt. Her conclusion was that we won’t all lose our jobs; we’ll have more ambitious work, building things that were beyond our imagination while we were stuck with the basics. The future is EXCITING, in her capitals.

I agree. A lot of what we build has always been shaped by what we could afford to attempt. Accessibility that goes well beyond compliance, offline behaviour that holds up on a train, search that understands people in their own language: good teams have always wanted these, and weighed them against everything else a release needs.

That balance is shifting. An idea that once needed a week to justify can be tried in an afternoon, a second approach can be built alongside the first, and the harder features don’t have to wait for a phase two.

We can build harder, better things than we could a year ago, and I find that genuinely exciting. I’m looking forward to seeing what we make.

ai