To create is to recreate.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.

T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood (1920)

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

Carl Sagan, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, Episode 9 (1980)

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

John Donne, “Devotions upon Emergent Occasions”, Meditation XVII (1624)

Do you have any advice for ambitious designers or engineers?

Design and build your own apps. You’ll never understand the challenges, tricks, and edge-cases of a note-taking app until you build a note-taking app.

Copy and re-implement work you admire until you can proudly create for yourself. Work where you can grow.

Play The Witness.

Paco Coursey (design engineer @ Linear), Interview with ui.land (2024)

You need to surround yourself with great work.

If you are a designer, look at great designs. If you are a writer, read great books. Expose yourself to great work, this way you’ll learn how greatness looks and feels like.

[…] Designers should copy great designs, writers should copy great books.

Copy and re-implement work you admire until you can proudly create for yourself.

Heavy exposure to great things shapes output.

Emil Kowalski (design engineer @ Linear), “Taste”, animations.dev course (2024)