[cbetti]

Prototyping alternative solutions is a cheap way to help uncover trade-offs, and you can do this independently.

Attending retrospectives after things go wrong is a good way for experts to introduce their thought processes to less experienced engineers.

Asking "why?" when senior engineers deliver feedback during design review can help you learn that a trade-off existed when you did not see it.

[hinkley]

I once was trying to design a validation framework. I thought it should work this way. The other lead thought it should work that way. So I proposed we write some sample code for these APIs and show it to the team. TDD with pseudocode before any of us knew what TDD was.

Only, I didn’t like having two to chose from. Something told me three would be better. So we paired, I wrote mine, then hers, then just made another one up on the spot. Once we agreed they were complete and implementable, I shopped them to the team.

About 2/3rds preferred the made up one. Including me. So that’s what I implemented.

[brazzy]

Great story! Not a huge surprise when you think about it - you made up the the third design just after thinking through the other two in detail.