Things I Believe In
The author reflects on a set of personal beliefs shaped by experience, including that most problems stem from broken communication, that people are doing their best with what they have, and that leadership is about creating conditions for others to succeed. They also emphasize the importance of listening, admitting mistakes, and focusing on what can be controlled rather than what cannot.
Background
- The author is Gui David, a designer and builder who previously contributed to the Cursor IDE (a popular AI-assisted code editor) and now works on an unreleased project codenamed "Ren." The piece is a personal manifesto about software design philosophy.
- Key beliefs: software should be "design-native" (built by people who design and code simultaneously), the best tools feel "boring" (reliable, mundane, solved), and most software is bad because the loop between builder and user is too long.
- The essay is relevant because it reflects a growing rejection of Silicon Valley's "move fast and break things" ethos in favor of craftsmanship, sustainability, and tight feedback loops — a stance common among the current wave of indie builders and "tool-makers."
- Prior context: Cursor (YC S22) is a fork of VS Code that became influential by deeply integrating LLMs into the editor. David helped build it; this piece offers his first principles for how software should feel and who should build it.