TB: It Pays to Get the Design Right

Clever structure tuned to the problem dramatically outperforms brute force. The right design encodes the structure of the problem itself, unlocking efficiency that cannot be recovered by simply adding more resources.

There is a pervasive temptation to solve hard problems by throwing more effort or compute at them. But the design — the choice of representation, algorithm, or protocol — often matters far more than the resources. Getting the design right first is almost always worth the investment.

• It pays to get the design right (source note): Shannon's information theory as the central example — clever protocols that take into account the structure of the information being communicated can perform much better than naive approaches.

• Abstractions Can Be Useful
• First Principles Thinking
• Long Chains of Complex Reasoning Are Brittle