Each week, I share one insight. One piece of wisdom. One question to reflect on. (and a little Lagniappe)
I spend a lot of time writing design documents for software systems these days. Recently, after several hours of spinning my wheels, I reached an "aha" moment. I scrapped half of my work and refined the other half, getting the idea down to its essence. What came out the other side was a software architecture that was deceptively simple, and yet couldn't have existed any other way.
A good design is teased out of fresh ideas built on foundational principles. It takes iteration, contradiction, and a unique perspective. Sometimes a beautiful design just falls right out of the process, almost instantly. Sometimes the design puts up a real fight before it settles into something special.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up (1936)
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