"Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast." If you move fast _and_ you break things you just end up with a lot of broken things. I never did understand this philosophy.
You do things slowly, intentionally, again and again and again, that it becomes almost muscle memory that when the times comes for you to do it again in future, it happens smooth and is thus fast eventually.
The problem is, as is so often the case with our modern companies, the things that got broken were other people's things. The things that were gained were made theirs.
In other words, privatized profits and socialized costs. Again.
"Move fast and break things" is about conquering the second kind of slow. Not idealizing breaking things but not being legitimately slow tied up in bad attempts not to break things.
An old baseball coach always said “be slow, but quick!” Took me years to sort that out.
Be thoughtful, be methodical, be aware, be comfortable, and be decisive. Made a lot of sense when I caught a 2-hopper off the line at 3rd and didn’t have time to think about how to field it or where to throw.
This isn’t related at all but it’s sure interesting how our brains evolved. When we are cognitively taxed, our ability to communicate breaks down. When we are physically taxed and doing something we are built to do (like running), conversations flow in the strangest ways. Heck, I’ve had long in depth conversations about Infinite Jest with total strangers on trail runs. It kind of makes you wonder about a whole lot of stuff we have filled our worlds with.
> When speed is the priority, there’s no incentive to improve or invest in the shared system (e.g. a design system or codebase) under a tight deadline.
These guardrails are precisely what should be laid down in advance to enable workers to run safely with AI. Write all the rules in your AGENTS file, and point your AI reviewer at it. Encode whatever you can describe algorithmically in commit hooks. This will get you 90% of the way there, and peer review will take care of the rest.
I am hopeful that AI will empower smaller companies, where there is less deadweight, and consensus can be formed more quickly. Discussing what to build is not wasted time; it's one of the few things that favors humans.
"Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast." If you move fast _and_ you break things you just end up with a lot of broken things. I never did understand this philosophy.
You do things slowly, intentionally, again and again and again, that it becomes almost muscle memory that when the times comes for you to do it again in future, it happens smooth and is thus fast eventually.
https://brajeshwar.com/2025/slow-is-smooth-smooth-is-fast/
It's about trying and breaking things to find out what's working, instead of casually tip-toeing lest you break something, and wasting your time.
or maybe just ask someone for help first before you go breaking stuff?
That's the spirit of the idea: It is meant to free you of that requirement, with the understanding that you very well may break things.
It is permission to trade inaccuracy for autonomy.
The problem is, as is so often the case with our modern companies, the things that got broken were other people's things. The things that were gained were made theirs.
In other words, privatized profits and socialized costs. Again.
In racing the fastest laps look slow.
But slow laps also look slow.
"Move fast and break things" is about conquering the second kind of slow. Not idealizing breaking things but not being legitimately slow tied up in bad attempts not to break things.
Step two is being slow in the right way.
An old baseball coach always said “be slow, but quick!” Took me years to sort that out.
Be thoughtful, be methodical, be aware, be comfortable, and be decisive. Made a lot of sense when I caught a 2-hopper off the line at 3rd and didn’t have time to think about how to field it or where to throw.
Sometimes you have to go slow (talk) in order to go fast (build the right thing).
Or: how the industry ends up with about half the things they build going completely unused.
History of invention in the science of mathematics would show that there is nothing that's useless in the long term. It's all pieces of a puzzle.
Nah, most remain useless.
Inventions that were initially useless but found application later, are still in the very small minority.
One of the most expensive learnings was: If you want to do it fast, do it slow.
Time and time again proven true.
This isn’t related at all but it’s sure interesting how our brains evolved. When we are cognitively taxed, our ability to communicate breaks down. When we are physically taxed and doing something we are built to do (like running), conversations flow in the strangest ways. Heck, I’ve had long in depth conversations about Infinite Jest with total strangers on trail runs. It kind of makes you wonder about a whole lot of stuff we have filled our worlds with.
> When speed is the priority, there’s no incentive to improve or invest in the shared system (e.g. a design system or codebase) under a tight deadline.
These guardrails are precisely what should be laid down in advance to enable workers to run safely with AI. Write all the rules in your AGENTS file, and point your AI reviewer at it. Encode whatever you can describe algorithmically in commit hooks. This will get you 90% of the way there, and peer review will take care of the rest.
I am hopeful that AI will empower smaller companies, where there is less deadweight, and consensus can be formed more quickly. Discussing what to build is not wasted time; it's one of the few things that favors humans.