Nothing speaks like a demo

When I came back from Recurse center with a working version of Checkboxland, I was sure it was going to generate some interest when I shared it.

I was wrong. I shared it with peers, and posted about it on some social media and link-aggregation sites, but it basically went nowhere.

I didn’t understand. “Don’t they see what kinds of interesting possibilities this opens up?” (spoiler: they didn’t)

It wasn’t until months later, that I thought, “whatever, I’m just gonna use Checkboxland to build a bunch of cool demos”. Shortly after that, it was featured in a bunch of newsletters and blogs.

It reminds me of Bret Victor. Lots of people talk about the future of programming or the future of education. The thing that made Bret different is that he demoed it. It didn’t matter that his demos weren’t fully built, or available for anyone to use. We simply needed to see it, in order to understand.

Nothing speaks like a demo.