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Sometimes I imagine "progress" as movement along a coil. In 2D, it seems like you're just reinventing the wheel. But in 3D, you can see that some hack or innovation allowed you to take a new stab at the problem. Other times I imagine trilemmas, as depicted in Scott McCloud's awesome book Understanding Comics. There's a bounded design (solution) space, with concerns anchoring each corner. Like maybe fast, simple, and correct. Or functional, imperative, and declarative. Or weight, durability, and cost. Or... Our job is to divine a solution that lands somewhere in that space, balancing those concerns, as best appropriate for the given context. By extension, there's no one-size fits all perfect solution. (Though there are "good enough" general purpose solutions.) The beauty of experiencing many, many different cuts at a problem, is that one can start to intuit things. Like quickly understand how a new product fits in the space. Like quickly narrowing the likely solution space for the current project. Comparing and contrasting stuff in an open-minded semi-informed way. Blah, blah, blah. |