Anti-*: the Things We Do but Not All the Way
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The article explores the concept of 'anti-*' - things we start but don't finish, and the discussion revolves around the interpretation and implications of this concept, with some commenters offering alternative perspectives and others disagreeing with the author's framing.
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Sep 22, 2025 at 11:03 AM EDT
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But all those websites, apps, blog posts and what not that I've created/written but never published, are still useful and was time well spent. People have almost an obsession with "finishing" and "shipping" something, otherwise it was worthless time spent on it. Calling those things "AntiApps" would make me feel bad about it, instead of feeling like I feel about them now, that in the moment they were "done" and I completed whatever I wanted to complete with it, it just wasn't the typical final artifact other people would need to have in order to feel like something is "finished".
Sometimes doing things just to do it is better than forcing yourself to reach some "completed" state you didn't even aim for when you started out.
[0] https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antili...
ambitions, drafts, mistakes.
Not a negative connotation with "mistake" either. If I had an idea and spent money on a domain name, but never take that idea to launch, it was a mistake to spend the money. But it was also a tiny bet, a necessary step in the direction of a launch. And I probably learned something along the way, which is the great value in mistakes.
The cost of undoing mistakes varies greatly. While I can sell a book I paid $20 for, and get a few dollars back, if I ever decide I want that book again, maybe I can go to the library, or maybe I can pay $20 again. If I give up a $10/year domain name, the odds are if I ever want it again, the cost will be much, much higher. Unused sketches and designs? Those are simply drafts, and drafts can be archived or discarded. The cost of storage is often inconsequential.
I think there's potential value in reflecting on unfulfilled ambitions, and maybe learning which of those past decisions weren't worth making. I'd say I don't think this article necessary puts forth a judgement of whether you should or should not have made those mistakes, or if you should make a change going forward, but merely puts it "out there" to reflect on.
A design of something is in support of that thing, not the opposite of it.
He worked on the Mona Lisa for 16 years, adding a brush stroke here and there until his death, never handing it to the wool merchant who commissioned it or his wife who was the subject of the painting.
His work is largely a collection of drafts and anti-*'s, but that hasn't taken away from his transformative role in the history of art, science, and engineering. There is beauty in unfinished work and in what we abandon. Finality is not necessary for greatness.
A library of unread books is still a library, in fact one should have a library of books you might want to read someday but haven’t yet, as part of the enjoyment of a library is coming across many things you’ve never read.
An anti-library might be a collection of things you could never read. A restricted place with all the books banned by a government, unorganized and uncategorized, inaccessible. Where books go to die.