Fast Turned Out to Be Fun
Last week, two serious systems went from empty repository to actually working, each in a single working day. One of them, a governed sales-demo system I'll call Project Falcon, went from repo creation at 09:27 to live and running for a real prospect around 16:45. The other, a commercial-intelligence engine I'll call Project Otter, went from first commit at 08:16 to its ninth tested build phase committed at 17:15. Not prototypes, not slideware. Real functionality, tested, running.
I want to write down what that week actually looked like, because the honest version is more interesting than the hype version. Yes, it was fast. Yes, it was genuinely fun, the kind of fun I remember from the early days of getting anything to work at all. And no, it was not effortless. Both of those are true at the same time, and I think the "how" behind it is worth explaining properly.