Ever experienced what Simon Wardley brilliantly describes in his talk on Wardley Mapping? I've lived through it myself. My journey began with a prompt to solve a problem using a CLI tool. AI suggested a wrapper which seemed promising. A few iterations later, we added a web UI and extra features missing from the original tool. I could've stopped there, but wanting to validate the system, I asked AI to generate test code. It tried but failed to run on my end. Hours of frustration followed as I pleaded with AI to simplify either the code or tests. It refused, claiming it would be too difficult, and we ended up in a circular conversation going nowhere. Completely frustrated, I started fresh with a crucial difference. My new prompt: "I want to do XYZ in the simplest manner and also need ABC, EFG capabilities. No code yet—let's explore solutions first." The result? AI suggested existing open-source tools I could connect to my environment. My head nearly exploded! This s...
There is no harder reality check that trying to use a mass marketed product you developed and finding it's hard edges for your particular necessities at a different point. Also it is really hard to get off your builder hat when it is not even in your turf to add those capabilites to the development roadmap of said product. It is impressive how many small and micro enterprises work with sub optimal solutions or the bare minimum functionallity and end up exporting information and doing the extra work on spreadsheets. It might look like small things but those are actual needs of a group of customers that are not being met; and I get the other side of the picture, there is no way that a product team can provide solutions for those needs while being constrained on resources and juggling with the needs of the high utilization volume users. This post I'm trying to be vague but for some examples here are somethings I'm currently missing. * In a cash payment to be able to record ret...