Never.
There are defeats more triumphant than victories.
—Michel de Montaigne
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
—Thomas Edison
Ask HN: Are you embarrassed by your failed projects?
41–50 of 51 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are you embarrassed by your failed projects?
#42A little, I started projects when I was 16 (some silly web game) that might not be too PC, and the code is awful, and I've rewritten the code twice!
Re: Ask HN: Are you embarrassed by your failed projects?
#43I feel like this question was very recently asked, and the real question I have for you is: why do you call it a failure?
To me, failure is an antiquated term you outgrow in school: F means failure, which really means you can't advance on to the next term. After school, when does that ever matter as an entrepreneur? Have you ever not learned something valuable from a past entrepreneurial experience? Would you say you are better or worse off from having done those things in the past? You're always learning, always growing, and you are a man of free will who can do whatever else he wants.
How is that, in any way, failure?
Re: Ask HN: Are you embarrassed by your failed projects?
#44I'm only embarrassed by the projects I never started.
Re: Ask HN: Are you embarrassed by your failed projects?
#45It depends on why they failed. I was involved in a project that failed because of a moral mistake I made. You could blame it on the culture (my whole team, my boss, my bosses boss, and the director of the organization were all "fired" because of this incident) but I was the one person who could have stopped it. And I didn't. To be fair, I probably would have lost my job had I done the right thing. On the other hand,…
Thanks for sharing that.
Out of pure curiosity, and for the betterment of all of us here, would you mind sharing your mistake? I accept, that you've grown for the better of it, and I'll promise not to be judgmental.
Re: Ask HN: Are you embarrassed by your failed projects?
#46Depends on what you metric you're using for 'failure'.
I normally define it as some mixture of revenue and traffic (I don't mind low revenue if it's high traffic and vice versa).
But there are other important metrics too. People have already mentioned what you learn from the project. If you learn something, it's not a complete failure.
Another metric is the effect you have on people. One of my coolest ideas (imho) was http://thingsinbooks.com. It gets about 10 visits per day, so by that metric it's a failure. It never earned any revenue so it's a failure by that metric. I didn't really learn anything from doing it either.
But despite the lack of traffic, people still link to it and even upload their finds from time to time (126 finds so far!). So in that way it has some elements of success, even though I've failed to capitalise on the interest and turn it into a popular site.
Re: Ask HN: Are you embarrassed by your failed projects?
#47It depends on why they failed. I was involved in a project that failed because of a moral mistake I made. You could blame it on the culture (my whole team, my boss, my bosses boss, and the director of the organization were all "fired" because of this incident) but I was the one person who could have stopped it. And I didn't. To be fair, I probably would have lost my job had I done the right thing. On the other hand,…
Thanks for sharing that. Out of pure curiosity, and for the betterment of all of us here, would you mind sharing your mistake? I accept, that you've grown for the better of it, and I'll promise not to be judgmental.
Doing what I was told.
Re: Ask HN: Are you embarrassed by your failed projects?
#48Never. If the project was a success, I did it for the project. If it wasn't, I did it to learn and grow. Either way, nothing to be embarrassed about. (Am I embarrassed by the code I wrote 3 years ago? Now that's another story.)
I think if you're not embarrassed by the code you wrote ages ago then you're not improving.
I'm embarrassed by the code I wrote last week.
Re: Ask HN: Are you embarrassed by your failed projects?
#49The thing about failed projects is that they're not seen as failure by your next employer, they're seen experience and potential. At the very least, you learn from it and use this knowledge on your next project.
Re: Ask HN: Are you embarrassed by your failed projects?
#50Never. If the project was a success, I did it for the project. If it wasn't, I did it to learn and grow. Either way, nothing to be embarrassed about. (Am I embarrassed by the code I wrote 3 years ago? Now that's another story.)
I think if you're not embarrassed by the code you wrote ages ago then you're not improving.
No, I don't think so. I'm still quite proud of the Vic-20 bulletin board I wrote 26 years ago that got me my first job as a programmer.