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Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?

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Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?

#211

Post by ponyous »

I was 14, just released my first text based game (think simple travian) to the world via national aggregation site (reddit of my nation at the time) got few thousands sign ups and few active players.

I hosted the project on some PHP hosting who's owner was a guy I met while playing online games. I edited and worked on the game live through some editor that offered FTP connections.

Because I was 14 I didn't have a card and I had to go to the post office to make a payment I missed it once and the dude shut my site off immediately & deleted everything. No backups. Since I was editing remotely I didn't have recent backup I had some old copy of the codebase. I never manually backed up the database, I didn't even know what backup was probably... So a game died 2 months after it was launched :(

related memory: I didn't know how to configure a cron job so I asked the dude if he can host me 1 machine open Opera on some url, right click and set "Refresh every 60 seconds" (Versions before 12.00 had that)

Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?

#212

Post by poulsbohemian »

RickS wrote: post #111
johnwheeler wrote: post #35

Don’t fish without a license

I'm really curious about this story.

I don't know johnwheeler's story, but I got talking to an Oregon game warden a couple weeks back. His story was that the state is handing out jail time and big fines in certain circumstances. What he described was work parties (large families, for example) coming from as far away as Seattle to pick up clams on the Columbia river. This particular type of clam is in vast numbers, but it is an invasive species. So you would think the state would be thankful to have them gone, right? What he described though is that the state is concerned about the spread to other bodies of water - so they want them left right there, rather than transported and potentially dumped somewhere else to spread. Given that these groups are collecting them for restaurant sales, I suspect that is an unlikely scenario, but there you have it. He said the biggest ticket he'd written was on the order of tens-of-thousands of dollars. So apparently this can be a hard lesson to learn.

Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?

#213

Post by balladeer »

kichik wrote: post #77

A company is a company, not a family. It's about making money, not about relationships. For better or worse, it's never really personal.

My late realisation (and at a cost) may be related to yours - your coworker is not your friend, better keep it that way.

Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?

#214

Post by bunderbunder »

bitfhacker wrote: post #199
bunderbunder wrote: post #11

Worse is better Or, to put it a bit more optimistically - usable now is better than perfect later. I've found that, if I disappear behind a curtain and spend a long time trying to make something really well-polished and feature rich, that just gives the user a lot of time to build up their expectations, and also to get frustrated by the delay. By the time you ship, they'll be actively looking for ways to find fault.…

> Or, to put it a bit more optimistically - usable now is better than perfect later. This is the same principle of Minimum Viable Product. In MVP you launch the first version of your product with sufficient features, but not all, to early adopters so that you can get feedback from them. MVP and the "Build Measure Learn" feedback loop, gives you important tools to leverage your product.

Yes, absolutely.

The language around MVPs tends to be couched in terms that pretty directly implies designing a product for external customers, though, so it tends to be harder to internalize for people who are doing in-house work, and even people who are somewhat removed from the product design process, such as many junior developers. What I've seen in is that it's common for people who are eager to impress their clients or teammates to want to say "yes" to everything. So, even if they like the idea of building MVPs in principle, in practice, their MVPs end up being pretty maximal.

Which is why I think there's value in framing the principle in terms of human-human relationships, and not just in terms of stuff like finding product-market fit. It's a more personal, relatable way of thinking about it.

The magic insight for me was when I finally realized that I could give people less than what they asked for, and they'd actually be happier than if I tried to give them everything they wanted.

Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?

#215

Post by the_clarence »

ponyous wrote: post #211

I was 14, just released my first text based game (think simple travian) to the world via national aggregation site (reddit of my nation at the time) got few thousands sign ups and few active players. I hosted the project on some PHP hosting who's owner was a guy I met while playing online games. I edited and worked on the game live through some editor that offered FTP connections. Because I was 14 I didn't have a car…

On the story of backups, I bought a webcam when I was young and started doing sketchs with my friends. We recorded so many videos, created our own tv shows acted like hosts and so on. later, my computer was not working well with some games, so I asked the place where I bought it to take a look. I came back a few days ago and they told me they had formatted the hard drive. I was like what? All my stuff was on there. I cried so much. Childhood trauma right here. Now I have multiple backups of everything.

Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?

#216

Post by the_clarence »

polpenn wrote: post #44

Life, by default, is suffering. The surprise is not the fact that there is suffering around the world, but how we managed to achieve the level of prolonged peaceful co-existence that we have today. We should act in such a way that suffering or chaos is reduced---however small such reduction may be. Suppose you had a choice between watching T.V. and washing the dishes. Watching T.V. means, perhaps, that your spouse wi…

It is really. The older you get the more you’ll observe or hear about people dying or having serious medical issues. Then there are the people getting raped or kidnapped or beaten up randomly... At this point i’m happy I wasn’t born in the middle of a war, but I’m hopping none of that will happen to me.

Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?

#217

Post by poulsbohemian »

It doesn't matter if they have money. It doesn't matter if they espouse religion or any other outward signs of honesty. It doesn't matter what they say. If you have any reason to believe they can't be trusted, even if it is a silly gut feeling, then they can't be trusted. Nor can you give them any possible wiggle room, like payment terms.

Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?

#219

Post by smarri »

Great question!

1. As a younger man I done a business deal on a handshake and then got ripped off after putting in a year of work - always get it in writing!

2. Companies are not loyal to people, people may be loyal to people, but never think an organisation will be

3. I ran up some debt as a student until I figured out personal finances, which boils down to; increase income, reduce expenditure, save and invest the rest, avoid liabilities as far as possible (e.g. do you really need a car on finance)

4. Avoid getting drunk! Get tipsy, not drunk

5. You'll always get over a breakup, no matter how difficult it seems at the time

6. Sometimes you have to leave a group of friends, a partner, or even family behind, to grow into who you want to be

7. Don't wait for other people to help you in your career or life, any help you get it a bonus and be grateful, but you're the captain of the ship - push yourself forward

8. Be yourself

9. You're better and more capable than you think

10. Tell those you care about you how you feel, you never know when you might lose that chance

We live and learn!

Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?

#220

Post by the_clarence »

parliament32 wrote: post #149
40acres wrote: post #40

Personal finance. I never took a budgeting class in high school and college, my parents lived paycheck to paycheck (still do), when I earned my first internship I was making over $1000 per pay period, that was a lot of money for someone who had only worked part time jobs for $10/hr before hand. By the time I got my second internship I earned more than my mother, who was the breadwinner. Once I was converted to full t…

Congrats on it taking just a few months. Some of us spend years in the "lifestyle" hole before waking up and getting a grip on finances.

I eat at restaurants everyday. I know I shouldn’t but it’s hard to change lifestyle...
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