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.
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