less is really more, more so in the ai age

I was recently working on a project. It started with one simple idea, which had one simple, clearly laid-out solution. I implemented that solution and was done with it. Then, I had this urge to do “more”. Add some more features. Make it more holistic. Make it well-rounded. Make it into a “complete product”. And I did do that, but I am not 100% sure it was the right thing to do.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that the features were not good, or the implementation sucked and wasn't well thought out. None of that. It's just that I have this constant feeling that they were not really needed, and I should have stuck to that one particular solution to that one particular problem.

The thing is, I expanded the problem statement just to justify adding new features. It doesn't matter how well the features were executed if I am not able to justify their existence and explain them to stakeholders.

Now with LLM-assisted coding, thinking of and then implementing new features is easy. But that speed and ease is actually the new bottleneck. Developers and PMs now need to act like art curators more than ever. And surely this isn't a new analogy, nor am I saying something new, but it appears more profound than ever to me that less is more.

Every developer should be spending more time thinking about and justifying adding a new feature than actually implementing it. It's that argument again: in the age of LLMs, taste will matter.

It's just that pre-AI, there was a limit to what could be done by a solo developer or a team, and you optimized for that. Now with that upper ceiling gone, and the barrier to entry basically at zero, everyone is trying to go broad from day one. MVPs aren't really MVPs. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's like what the fuck, if you get me???

We are not thinking, or at least I am not, because I should have thought more before adding that feature. Talked more with my team. At least the good thing is that I learned something.

And now that I reread what I have written, I haven't said anything new that other people haven't, but that's fine because this is primarily for getting my own thoughts out and nobody else is going to read this.