Oh I very strongly resonated with that! This was one of the two quotes I wrote down from the interview. One thing I notice when I see artists works or when I'm

Oh I very strongly resonated with that! This was one of the two quotes I wrote down from the interview. One thing I notice when I see artists works or when I'm working on an artistic project of my own is that the project is absolutely ugly for 80% of the process. It takes a lot of changing, tweaking, adjustments, and sometimes also an unreasonable amount of fine detail work to get something that looks good; and then a ton more work to get something that looks great. That's what he means by "mess" I think; all projects should start as a mess, and develop/grow/iterate into something more beautiful. I find programmers tend to operate less iteratively, and more like engineering, where you need to come up with a good solution before implementing it, because in engineering you can't undo, and costs are high to make changes after a certain point. The analogy I like is: programming is often compared to engineering/construction, but is perhaps better represented by gardening; it's got a much more organic nature and flexibility.