Assignment 1

The first graded checkpoint — find something real and unfinished, and name specifically why its last mile is expensive, using the frameworks from weeks 1 through 6

Due: 2 April 2027 · Weight: 30%

The brief#

Find something unfinished — yours, or one you go find — and diagnose exactly where its last mile lives and why crossing it is expensive.

This is not a survey of the lectures. Pick one real thing: a project you started and stalled on, a friend’s business that never quite launched, an open-source tool that’s “basically done” and has been for a year. Then use this course’s own distinction — slow versus expensive — to say precisely what makes finishing this thing costly, not just tedious. “The fix touches the thing everyone else already built on” is the kind of answer this brief is asking for; “it takes a while” is not.

You get to choose the thing. You don’t get to choose vague terms for why it’s stuck.

What you submit#

A written diagnosis, 1,200–1,800 words: what the thing is, what “finished” would actually look like for it, and — using at least one week’s framework by name — exactly what makes its last mile expensive rather than merely slow. If the thing has a public trace (a repo, a listing, a draft), link to it as evidence you’re diagnosing something real.