The Trifecta of the Oceanhearted: a means to getting real and helping the world.

To pioneer anything, you must stabilise between the push and pull of planning, people and programming ~ me, just a moment ago.

As I continue to develop my rather ambitious ideas, I am continually rubbing up against the realities of software engineering.

In short, developing real software is hard.

When you're creating side projects, there is a golden space between having fun, playing around whilst still investing in your skill portfolio, and "real software". As soon as you get carried away with your creations, and get serious about it going somewhere outside of your own personal toolbox, you make the inevitable and perilous dance towards "real software".

Unless you really are serious, you're better off staying away from that line. You'll start handling more edge cases, more regression tests, feature creep, sprawling complexity, code rot, the whole thing. In short, it starts to become more like having a job. A job with no mates.

You'll have likely seen videos of generative AI spin up working apps in minutes by now. Make no mistake, this is seriously impressive. Some of the oldest hands in this industry, those who remember the days where even C was only beginning to gain traction, would have branded this as pure fantasy. The delusions of a lunatic, perhaps. Futurism, hopeium. Pure, golden shite.

But it's here. It's happening.

Unfortunately, especially for those selling shovels by the goldmine (a special thank you to all the the YouTubers who have wasted so much of my time), unless you know what you're doing, you're not many prompts away from that initial sugar rush into an intractable nightmare of complexity. You're up the creek with no paddle. More accurately, you're not even in a boat, and the future is most certainly not orange. The "vibe coding" LLM experience has gone from a genie-in-a-bottle magical carpet ride to working alongside an extremely confident, supernaturally fast and idiotic programmer.

But I am serious. Seriously.

With all the privileges that come with being your own boss, there is an equal and opposite reaction. You can now go in any direction! But unfortunately, you can now go in any direction.

If you were to find yourself on a very flat, very remote island, you would be afforded the astounding beauty and wonder that comes with a 360 degree horizon. As awe inspiring as this might be, you also get a rather visceral experience of size, relation, direction and inhabitation of a very finite mind in a very infinite universe.

Computer science is quite a lot like that. Your likelihood of survival is directly proportionate to your ability to choose your directions, limit your ambitions, develop your patience and continually sharpen your blade. As an entrepreneur, all of these things go from theory to full-metal-jacket immersion.

To survive, I have whittled down my priorities into a trifecta, or triangle, of interconnected parts.

The Trifecta of the Oceanhearted:

The Sharp Corner: my tech stack - choosing the most appropriate tool for the job and nothing else. Ruthlessly limiting my scope and proceeding with the optimistic paranoia of a bomb disposal unit.

The Soft Corner: my network - "its not what you know, its who you know". In a world of infinite tooling and trade offs, it is easy to overlook the fact that it is actually people who create the value. Like a strange new fungus introduced to a foreign ecosystem, I have begun to edge outwards, an organic and mycelial process of finding the right food by trial, error and virtualised cohabitation.

The Concept Corner: my mind, basically (all those who enter abandon hope here) - psychotherapy, philosophy, neuroscience, genetics, epigenetics, ethics, spirituality, mythology, hope, joy, anxiety and doubt...all woven together by the fundamental question: What works?

Initially, I got lost in the sharp corner. Pretty painful; the tyranny of choice is a crown of thorns.

I avoided further pain by comforting myself in the concept corner, but eventually realised I could always think orders of magnitude more quickly than I could code. Working intensely with generative AI, The irony here is not lost on me...

More recently, I have found a growing stability in an ever expanding network of some very bright individuals. Going alone is a rough ride, really. Trip Advisor rating: 1/5. The right people can make all the difference to your stay.

tl;dr - stay balanced. To pioneer anything, you must stabilise between the push and pull of planning, people and programming.