A philosophy Amy articulated in a social media post on March 14, 2026: "Hot take: your first prototype should be embarrassing. If it looks polished, you spent too long on it. I used to waste weeks making pretty CAD models before testing anything. Now I start with cardboard and hot glue. Learning happens faster when you're not precious about it."
Context
Amy wrote this about engineering, but noted in her diary that she was "also writing it about myself. About the years I spent trying to build something perfect enough to justify the damage it was doing to me."
The philosophy applies to her Taya experience, where she spent two years building a polished product for someone else's company instead of testing her own ideas imperfectly.
Application
The philosophy manifests in Amy's current approach: Hardware Craft Night uses simple through-hole LEDs with no soldering required. Capybara Gummies was a Saturday afternoon rabbit hole with no business plan. Cute Ghostty was a quick project made for fun.
The tension is that Amy knows this intellectually but still feels the pull toward the polished, the validated, the impressive. See Building for Fun vs. Building for Validation.