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

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

#251

Post by infinite8s »

Const-me wrote: post #235
JudgeWapner wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

completely ignoring privacy. ISP's "collect" (read: eavesdrop) on all data they can get their hands on.

ISPs know IP addresses anyway, even with HTTPS. Same with DNS names. SSL makes a lot of sense on web sites like facebook and youtube: users enter sensitive data there, servers serve terabytes of available content, not all of which is public, and even for public, the user’s selection is privacy-sensitive. For a small static web sites, any person in the world can get their hands on all the content, that’s the whole poi…

Say you trust mrb on hackernews. He lists his website on his profile page. You go to that site. How do you know you are seeing what mrb wants you to see (his contact info). SSL.

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

#252

Post by ScottFree »

sah2ed wrote: post #247
ScottFree wrote: post #209

Just out of curiosity, is anybody here looking to create a new consumer operating system to compete with Windows and Mac? I'd like to, but I have no idea where to start. Talk about putting it off because something already exists! :)

You conveniently left out Linux, why :)? Linus Torvalds recently did an interview [0], where he talked about, amongst other things, just how hard it is to get an OS off the ground. Excerpt: “I used to think that some radical new and exciting OS would come around and supplant Linux some day (hey, back in 1994 I probably still thought that maybe Hurd would do it!), but it's not just that we've been doing this for a lon…

Linux is not, nor has it ever been, a valid consumer operating system. Ever year has supposedly been the year of the linux desktop since 1998 (21 years!). Maybe it's time to give up the hope that Linux will ever challenge Windows or MacOS on the Desktop.

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

#253

Post by Ologn »

bo1024 wrote: post #182
ankit219 wrote: post #134

My $0.02. If you feel like the problem exists, start building. But, if you think the problem is solved, then it makes no sense to proceed with it. For a startup, people use your product because they have a problem to solve. It does not matter how bad your UI/UX is, how drastically bad your flows are, if you are offering a solution no one else is, you will have users. It just needs to work. The more pertinent the prob…

I really like this perspective! Maybe Zoom is a good example. For remote meetings, I was using Skype, Google Hangouts, and other video chat software. I kept having problems (especially on Linux). Products existed, but the problem wasn't solved. For me, Zoom solved the problem.

The same for me. Zoom works well for me on Ubuntu Linux. IIRC, Google Hangouts works as well. Skype for Business I have had problems with.

I have primarily used Linux for 25 years. In recent years the only other program I had trouble with was that the Unity IDE would run on Ubuntu, but to compile and export a VR scene, I needed to use a Mac.

Noting the OP - I created a thesaurus site a few years ago - https://www.matchingwords.com . I tried to pay for Google Ads for it, but they said the site was "not unique enough" and refused my money. Well there was an aspect of the site that was somewhat unique, although not completely unique - I had integrated hunspell into the site, so not only would a word like "laugh" yield a result, so would "laughs" and "laughed". That still was not enough for them though.

Tangentially, the thesaurus backend work was something another project had needed and was done before the web site was put up. With that backend work done, I thought it would be easy to just put up a website so that the backend work could be used twice, so I put up the website.

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

#254

Post by humblebee »

dsalzman wrote: post #223

This reminds me of an old blog of mine. "The culture of Googling everything is diminishing innovation and critical thinking." Person A: "I have this great Idea!" Person B: "What is it?" Person A: "Well its ______ for ______!. Isn't that awesome" Person B: (Quickly googles on his phone) "There are already X companies doing exactly that" Person A: "Ohhh..."(Drops his head in shame and moves on" The most innovative idea…

I use to work with a friend from high school on a lot of side projects. He was entrepreneur, and I was just a hacker. I'd generally share all my random ideas with him because I just wanted to talk through the idea with someone and he was generally the only person who would be interested at all in any of my ideas. However, he commonly would come back with a google search and saying "It's that just X". He was very focused on how can an idea be monetized, and all I cared about was how I could build it / how it works.

The flip side of that is as soon as I figured something out I moved on, which lead to many half baked projects that I never got to completion. Once I figured out how something worked or how to solve a problem I lost interest in the idea almost completely and moved onto the next thing.

I still haven't completely figured out how to frame thing in a way to avoid this. The best way I know how to do it is to over shoot the idea most of the time. The issue is this doesn't work very well when working within a team.

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

#255

Post by [deleted] »

sah2ed wrote: post #247
ScottFree wrote: post #209

Just out of curiosity, is anybody here looking to create a new consumer operating system to compete with Windows and Mac? I'd like to, but I have no idea where to start. Talk about putting it off because something already exists! :)

You conveniently left out Linux, why :)? Linus Torvalds recently did an interview [0], where he talked about, amongst other things, just how hard it is to get an OS off the ground. Excerpt: “I used to think that some radical new and exciting OS would come around and supplant Linux some day (hey, back in 1994 I probably still thought that maybe Hurd would do it!), but it's not just that we've been doing this for a lon…

[deleted]

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

#256

Post by sah2ed »

ScottFree wrote: post #252
sah2ed wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You conveniently left out Linux, why :)? Linus Torvalds recently did an interview [0], where he talked about, amongst other things, just how hard it is to get an OS off the ground. Excerpt: “I used to think that some radical new and exciting OS would come around and supplant Linux some day (hey, back in 1994 I probably still thought that maybe Hurd would do it!), but it's not just that we've been doing this for a lon…

Linux is not, nor has it ever been, a valid consumer operating system. Ever year has supposedly been the year of the linux desktop since 1998 (21 years!). Maybe it's time to give up the hope that Linux will ever challenge Windows or MacOS on the Desktop.

> Linux is not, nor has it ever been, a valid consumer operating system.

I disagree with your assertion since it wasn’t properly qualified. Linux is indeed a valid consumer OS but it has never been a mainstream OS on the desktop. In spite of that, it has become a mainstream consumer OS on mobile, in the form of Android.

Anyway, the original point of my reply was to highlight just how involved building a new OS from scratch is, relative to other software projects you could work on. Add to that the unlikelihood of ever seeing a pay off for the amount of resources that would need to be committed to such an endeavor, unless you are under a big tech company.

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

#257

Post by dsalzman »

humblebee wrote: post #254
dsalzman wrote: post #223

This reminds me of an old blog of mine. "The culture of Googling everything is diminishing innovation and critical thinking." Person A: "I have this great Idea!" Person B: "What is it?" Person A: "Well its ______ for ______!. Isn't that awesome" Person B: (Quickly googles on his phone) "There are already X companies doing exactly that" Person A: "Ohhh..."(Drops his head in shame and moves on" The most innovative idea…

I use to work with a friend from high school on a lot of side projects. He was entrepreneur, and I was just a hacker. I'd generally share all my random ideas with him because I just wanted to talk through the idea with someone and he was generally the only person who would be interested at all in any of my ideas. However, he commonly would come back with a google search and saying "It's that just X". He was very focu…

I don't think you have a problem at all. You just need a partner who enjoys the money making side as much as you love to create and work together.

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

#258

Post by ScottFree »

sah2ed wrote: post #256
ScottFree wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux is not, nor has it ever been, a valid consumer operating system. Ever year has supposedly been the year of the linux desktop since 1998 (21 years!). Maybe it's time to give up the hope that Linux will ever challenge Windows or MacOS on the Desktop.

> Linux is not, nor has it ever been, a valid consumer operating system. I disagree with your assertion since it wasn’t properly qualified. Linux is indeed a valid consumer OS but it has never been a mainstream OS on the desktop. In spite of that, it has become a mainstream consumer OS on mobile, in the form of Android. Anyway, the original point of my reply was to highlight just how involved building a new OS from s…

What is the point of this whole thread? Did you just want to show what a smart boy you are by stating the obvious? Yes, I'm well aware that developing a new OS is hard. Everything worthwhile in life is hard. Why would I let that stop me?

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

#259

Post by JohnFen »

infinite8s wrote: post #250
JohnFen wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> good software is not enough to win. This can be generalized: a good product is not sufficient. To succeed in the market requires a lot of things, a good product being only one of them.

In some cases a good product is not even necessary.

True, but that often depends on your definition of "good". A barely adequate but very inexpensive product can be "good" for its intended market.

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

#260

Post by JohnFen »

xyproto wrote: post #180
flexie wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And Altavista and Yahoo were much larger than Google, at the time when it appeared.

I remember when Google was first introduced, and a large number of people were calling them insane for going toe-to-toe with the Big Boys.
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