The Tortoise and the Hare, Revisited
Itay MamanBack in the early '80s, there was this little Atari BASIC program used to teach graphics, random...
Back in the early '80s, there was this little Atari BASIC program used to teach graphics, random numbers, and loops. On one side, a "hare" jumps around randomly, drawing lines in arbitrary directions. On the other, a "tortoise" methodically works through the space column by column, top to bottom.
The hare's strides give it a huge early lead—you think it's going to win. Yet the tortoise's systematic approach always prevails. For some unknown nerdy reason, I recreated it recently, in HTML/JavaScript, with a few tweaks.
Watching it run felt uncomfortably familiar. The parallel to AI coding agents writes itself: in hare mode I let the agent take the wheel, whereas in tortoise mode I am pair-programming with it - small tasks, reviewing, staying hands-on.
The hare gets to 97% astonishingly fast. It does everything in quick wide strokes: boilerplate, features, and integrations. Work that would take a skilled developer days, done in minutes. But it leaves gaps that are excruciatingly hard to close.
The tortoise arrives at 97% much later. But when they get there, they keep walking right through to 100%. No invisible wall, just a steady, relentless pace.
I've been both animals these past few months. The hare is more fun. But more than once, struggling to close that last 3%, I've thought: would I be better off starting from scratch in tortoise mode?
The original "hare and tortoise" program appeared in ATARI® Games and Recreations by Herb Kohl, Ted Kahn, Len Lindsay, and Pat Cleland. h/t @yonatanm for digging it up.