Write One to Throw Away

A technique sometimes employed in developing computer software that occurred to me might equally have an application in philosophy is that of rapid prototyping. This typically involves constructing a ‘quick-and-dirty’ version of the system you’re trying to develop that mimics how many of its main features will work, but without all the effort that goes into constructing the fully working version. Consequently, many details of the prototype will be missing or inaccurate, and its implementation is likely to be of sub-standard quality. Nevertheless, the process of building such a prototype has several benefits. Firstly, you get to see roughly what the finished product will look like well before it’s actually complete, thus giving you the opportunity to gather feedback, refine the design, and so on early on in the development cycle—i.e. before various key decisions become too entrenched to change easily. Secondly, the experience that you gain from constructing the prototype will itself help to inform decisions about the construction of the final system, even if it’s a matter of how not to do things rather than providing a positive role model.

Perhaps the most important feature of such a prototype, however, is that it is built to be thrown away. This enables one to take all kinds of shortcuts that wouldn’t normally be acceptable but without this negatively affecting the quality of the final product. Indeed, it’s generally considered to be a Bad Idea to use a prototype as a basis for the final system. This is partly because it’s likely to constitute a rather shaky foundation given that it was created rapidly with relatively little concern for its internal structure, but also because after creating the prototype you are in a much better position to see how the same task could be achieved a whole lot better the second time around. In other words, when it comes to prototypes, what matters isn’t so much the end product as the experience that you gain through creating it.