Good Lesson, but not universal...

Aaron Iba explains in his blog that his iPhone game led him to a new way of thinking about development that he thinks makes him a better programmer and startup founder.

"Iterate-and-Repair" is a good optimization strategy where opportunity costs are low (i.e. trying out different solutions in a puzzle game), but they aren't so great where opportunity costs are high (i.e. trying to send a man to the moon). In that case, the best strategy is still to engineer an optimal solution using mathematics.

The key distinction is not learning styles, nor even an MIT background, but rather asking the question: "what is the opportunity cost for my solution?"

The late 90's saw a wave of "good enough" engineering that was based on a similar idea of iterate-and-repair, but notoriously did not factor opportunity cost in the analysis. Who needs all those edge-cases and testing when you can follow the 80-20 pareto rule and get to market quickly? Well, if you've ignored the opportunity costs and your solution fries a thousand people in an aircraft, or tanks a billion dollars in stocks overnight, you better believe that an 80/20 approach is not "good enough" after all.

Of course you should use the right tool for the job, but there is still a need for engineered solutions.