We can develop things faster than we can define them.
@jryanday
I’ve remarked before that @cdupuis can implement new features way faster than I can document them. This is not ridiculous; creating something is often faster than connecting it to existing people who can use it.
Ryan took this farther: we can’t even define what we want faster than we can implement it, sometimes. This is not ridiculous; design informs implementation, and implementation informs design.
Implementation informs design, and the process of implementation builds a mental model in the developer’s head. Making that model concrete and communicating it to someone else is hard, sometimes harder than getting the code working. Communicating that model in a way that oodles of people can use it is harder still, sometimes an order of magnitude harder. It includes documentation, yes, and marketing and customer service and advocacy. If you’re really serious, writing a specification. These all inform the next iterations of design and of implementation.
Developing things is only a beginning.