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Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

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121–130 of 301 posts

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#121

Here's the recommendation I give to students when they ask me this question (it's a common one!): You come up with a brilliant idea, you obsess over it, you Google some info, and on your screen lies your idea, being done by someone else, for the last two years. You’re all too familiar with that sinking feeling in your stomach that follows. You abandon the idea almost immediately after all that excitement and ideation…

Exactly. And while we are at Google. They were not the first search engine, but merely one of dozens if not hundreds. Facebook was not the first social network. Apple was not the first producer of computers for consumers. Amazon was not the first web store.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#122
post #80
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Electron apps are not only not efficient but also not performant.

Except in development time and cost.

And the users care about this why?

Delphi calls from 1998, it was even faster than Electron in development time and cost. Yet almost nobody uses it now.

What killed it? Just one has economic bust and developer generation change perhaps?

(And no, it was not networking, it had good capabilities the too. It wasn't web either.)

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#123
post #61
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is centralized Irc clone with better UI.

And Dropbox is rsync, we know already

Both have GUI the original services did not.

And Google Talk/Allo/Jibe is Jabber and Asterisk with a fancy coat of paint.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's already another website that does exactly the same thing I don't think there's anything wrong with this per se, but you still need something to set yours apart. For example, if the features are identical, then the price can be different. If the price is the same, then you can edge them out with features or service or get ready, experience. Amazon won us over with price, but now there are often other places…

> For example, if the features are identical, then the price can be different. Just a reminder that pricing "cheaper" isn't always a good idea. Newbies often think they'll charge less, but without having the data competitors have of how long the product takes to develop & maintain, how much support is involved, how much advertising costs to acquire a customer, how often you need to upgrade your equipment etc. Please…

Can't beat "free" on price which is why Google is so terrible to compete against.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#125
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm building an "intentional system". The idea's that you just tell the computer what to do, and it does it the best way possible. This includes figuring out what you told it to do, how to do that, how to optimize it, etc., in a provably optimal way. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to achieve, but to me, this sounds prohibitively difficult for even the largest most sophisticated organizations at this…

Didn't IBM do a programming language like that once? They found out, that most times, people don't actually know what they want, or how to explain it in a way that only have one or two perfectly valid interpretations.

So you mean Prolog? It's not quite IBM's. And yes, many expert systems are about guessing what the user wants rather than providing an accurate answer - and refinement later.

They're called search engines, I heard Google was making a darn good one in 1998.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#127
post #85

Here's the recommendation I give to students when they ask me this question (it's a common one!): You come up with a brilliant idea, you obsess over it, you Google some info, and on your screen lies your idea, being done by someone else, for the last two years. You’re all too familiar with that sinking feeling in your stomach that follows. You abandon the idea almost immediately after all that excitement and ideation…

Brilliant advice. I've have been on the exact journey you described - the idea that won't leave me alone (probably 6 years old now), Googled early on to see if anyone else had built it yet; found two existing companies pursuing the same thing, but in two different ways that don't quite match my own. I've been sitting on the idea for the last two or three years (it still won't leave me alone), and it has now evolved s…

As an angel investor, I'm curious. If you need seed funding, email me :) My contact info is on zorinaq.com

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#128
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm building an "intentional system". The idea's that you just tell the computer what to do, and it does it the best way possible. This includes figuring out what you told it to do, how to do that, how to optimize it, etc., in a provably optimal way. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to achieve, but to me, this sounds prohibitively difficult for even the largest most sophisticated organizations at this…

Didn't IBM do a programming language like that once? They found out, that most times, people don't actually know what they want, or how to explain it in a way that only have one or two perfectly valid interpretations.

It'd be neat if you could recall what IBM's programming language is called.

It does seem to be the case that a lot of things can be interpreted multiple different ways, which does require people to precisely state what they want.

I think a classic example if a house-cleaning robot told to keep the house as clean as possible, only for that robot to then try to murder the residents after correctly determining that the residents are a primary source of uncleanliness.

Within the system's own logic, I have to be super-careful to precisely specify exactly what I want something to do, much as someone working in any other system has to be careful to specify exactly what the code's supposed to do in its various use cases. But with user-facing applications, it'll tend to assume some default assumptions. For example, if you hire someone to clean your house and tell them to keep it as clean as possible, obviously they know not to murder people to accomplish that goal, as that intent has been communicated through other channels.

However, this also proves to be beneficial in a lot of cases. For example, if you say, "Go buy eggs from the store", but don't clarify which store, that can be interpreted multiple ways. Still, say that the first store happens to be out of eggs; then, it's good that a valid alternative interpretation exists, as the first attempt at interpretation wasn't viable.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#129
This is a funny question because most successful open source software seems to be a clone of existing software. E.g. gimp/Photoshop, inkscape/Illustrator and libre office/office. Of course the nice part is that as an OSS developer, you don't have to think about the requirements and specification and even the UI of the software because that has already been done.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#130

The saying: “Pioneers get arrows. Settlers take the land.” Basically represents that being first to market is not ideal. Out execute when the market is proven.

There is always a new component to success.

Facebook's was a social graph. Google's were big analytics. Uber's a new terrible business model. Microsoft's was coopting so many good ideas to build a software ecosystem. Apple was the same with hardware.

And sometimes the space is just free for the taking, given strong enough budget. That's how DTP and CAD, electronics design and 3D graphics were almost duopolized. (And by better part libraries.)

Sound and video editing are a bit more competitive, but not a lot.

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