Inventing on Principle

The demos are what people remember — editing code and watching a game change instantly — but the real subject is the second half: finding a principle to organise your work around.

What stayed with me

• Creators need an immediate connection to what they’re creating. Every delay between an idea and seeing its result is a tax on thinking.
• The talk frames the principle as something you discover by noticing what bothers you, not a career plan you choose.
• Many of today’s live-reload and notebook tools read like partial answers to it.

Where I disagree

Immediate feedback can also encourage fiddling over thinking. Some of my best work came from not being able to see the result straight away.