I would say that there is no contradiction with bottom-up approach, and it was popularized before PG by SICP lectures with image manipulation DSL for making these beautiful recursive image patterns.
Your each iteration in a bottom-up process could be based on a small insight after thinking about a subproblem. Later one just re-uses ones own realizations and adapts them to new requirements.
Also I think that it should be not just linear bottom-up process, but recursive one, when you regularly "call yourself" with the old problem, but a "new you, evolved with experience". Starting from the bottom, from basic building blocks is crucial. The only "addition" is that nothing will be set in stone and you should come back to "simplify" and refactor even what is at the very bottom.
I also never advocated Knuth's idea or that whole programs should be printed as books (while some procedures such as map or append are worth to be printed and framed).
As for poetry, well, I thing almost every youth wrote some in his late teens or early twenties, and yes, I told it wrong, not a whole poem emerges in ones mind, but a few central passages, the main scheme, to which some ornaments could be added later.
Your each iteration in a bottom-up process could be based on a small insight after thinking about a subproblem. Later one just re-uses ones own realizations and adapts them to new requirements.
Also I think that it should be not just linear bottom-up process, but recursive one, when you regularly "call yourself" with the old problem, but a "new you, evolved with experience". Starting from the bottom, from basic building blocks is crucial. The only "addition" is that nothing will be set in stone and you should come back to "simplify" and refactor even what is at the very bottom.
I also never advocated Knuth's idea or that whole programs should be printed as books (while some procedures such as map or append are worth to be printed and framed).
As for poetry, well, I thing almost every youth wrote some in his late teens or early twenties, and yes, I told it wrong, not a whole poem emerges in ones mind, but a few central passages, the main scheme, to which some ornaments could be added later.