Designing Software under the Influence
beach reported on IRC "In fact I agree with a French colleague of mine who works for the water company, that you have more and better ideas when under the influence, but then you need to be totally clean when working out the details. Luckily, grad students work out the details these days :)"
My answer was that I fell in the wine barrel when I was a kid, and the effects on me are permanent. Maybe that's why I have all these ideas, but can never work out the details.
rsynnott remarked that he normally attributes that to laziness, in himself. I suppose that could be a valid other name for that. In any case, that's why I'm now working towards getting minions to work for me.
Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia: If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.