Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JiVDYL20G4&t=1s
"Like how I learned is really by just making stuff, building things without knowing what the fuck I'm doing. Like I did not know the concept, the words. I just I want to do this. I'll just figure out how to do it. Use whatever tool that's there. And then you learn by doing that."
Why this matters: Cuts through all the framework/theory bullshit. Just build.
This is gold - it cuts through all the mental masturbation about frameworks and design theory without actually building.
Other Important Thoughts from the Talk
On the changing role of designers:
"My personal KPI at cursor this year is to turn all the designers into coders. The roles will start blurring. The designers will start coding, the engineers will start designing and then our shared language is code."With AI tools, the barrier between thinking and building disappearsOn the design process with AI:
"You start not by getting everything perfect. You actually start by building.""You get this clump of thing. It might not be great. It might not be perfect, but it is the thing and you sculpt it."Like sculpting vs painting - you start with something real and shape it, rather than painting pixels that aren't realOn systems thinking:
Design in a "systems first way" - decompose problems into primitives that can combine flexiblyExample: Notion's blocks, pages, databases - simple primitives that create emergence"You try to keep that core concepts as simple as possible, but they all are somewhat flexible"On Baby Cursor (his personal playground):
Built a simplified version of Cursor in an afternoon to prototype ideasDesigners need their own playground to experiment without technical constraints"You can actually feel it almost like alive"On what won't change:
Focus on the core concepts that will stay constant over 10 yearsEverything else can evolve around those fundamentalsOn what designers should focus on:
Deep craft and details (AI can't do this yet)Systems thinking - understanding how everything connects"The more domain knowledge you have plus the agent, the more things you can do"