Learning in Public
There’s a thing people in tech call “learning in public” - the practice of sharing your work and thinking as you go, not just the finished version.
I’ve always found this uncomfortable. My instinct is to get something good before I show it. Showing unfinished work feels like inviting criticism before you’ve had a chance to fix the obvious things.
But I’ve been reconsidering this.
The problem with waiting until something is finished is that “finished” keeps moving. There’s always a revision, a clarification, a section you’re not happy with. The work that waits for finished often doesn’t ship at all.
Learning in public is partly a forcing function. If you’ve told people you’re working on something, you feel the pull to actually produce it. The audience, even a small or imaginary one, creates a kind of accountability.
More than that, though: sharing unfinished work changes how you think about it. When something exists only in your head, it has no edges. The moment you try to explain it to someone else, you discover the places where your thinking is vague or incomplete.
Writing is one version of this. So is showing code to someone. So is this post, which started as a private note and became something slightly more considered in the act of trying to make it readable.
I’m not fully converted. I still believe in taking the time to make something good before sharing it. But I’m trying to hold that belief more lightly - to notice when “not ready yet” is a genuine assessment and when it’s just fear.