Tool Creation and Cognitive Space

- 3 minutes read - 509 words

I was intrigued by a recent post by Alex Tiniuc about tool creation in software development. In “Unexpected Benefits of Building Your Own Tools”, Tiniuc describes how he’s been making a video game (main task) but that he took a detour to work on a simple tool for editing the inventory of “assets” (game-developer-speak for “stuff in the world”) possible in the game (side task). But once he returned to the main task, he found he’d boosted his productivity in such a way that he wasn’t in the weeds anymore; he was working at a higher level and, freed of drudgery, seeing ways to make the game (main task) better.1

Tiniuc observes that when we develop small tools that save us cognitive burden, we create, in aggregate, space for inspiration and intuition to blossom. I found a fascinating echo in the case of Tiniuc and that of William Oughtred a 16th century Anglican clergyman and mathematician.

An Echo Across Centuries

Oughtred introduced several mathematical symbols we take for granted today: the multiplication sign (×), and notation for sine and cosine. Before this time, mathematics of this sort would have been given in words or even poetry. These weren’t mere aesthetic tweaks - they were tools that helped remove complexity so that more data could be generated, could be allowed to wash over him, so that he could feel his way to deeper themes and connections.

Does Tiniuc, while designing his game with the asset editor, get to imagine a world of battling botnet swarms instead of flying toward that vision and then finding his creative genius bound by fetters of post-it reminders to update a world inventory spreadsheet?

Patterns in Progress

Looking at both stories, we can see a fascinating pattern repeat across domains and time periods:

  • Per Tiniuc: Command line tools → automated testing → better software quality
  • Per Tiniuc: Game editing tools → rapid iteration → improved game design

Oh and as for Oughtred, his understanding of logarithms and his creation of a dense corpus of standardized multiplication examples (the “big data” of his day) may have ultimately given him the cognitive freedom to apply his insights to two sticks. Yes, I mean two, literal, sticks. History would note Oughtred’s contributions as:

Notational tools for multiplication → exploration of direct multiplication’s relationship to logarithmic scales → the slide-rule

…A tool which, in turn, enabled other humans to get a bunch of “drudgery” out of the way so that they could see a modern miracle but 300 years later: yet another man setting his boot-print in lunar soil.

Footnotes

  1. Doubtless no game development studio works like that! “Hey the developers are bogged down what should we do?” “Go Agile! Ditch Agile! Use the new blub language! Reject blub and the hype! Hire McKinsey!” are acceptable answers. It’s probably rare to hear “Hey let’s make working in the space fun and then, I dunno, we’ll figure it out.” On the other hand, it seems that a great many iconic games were built just that way (looking at id Software).