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Just Launch the Damn Thing

mobilefolk.com

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Re: Just Launch the Damn Thing

#2

Post by Hadrianus »

But also, don't. The world is chock-full of unstable, insecure, incomplete apps, services and technologies. Our desire to be first to market, or to practice extreme continuous improvement via rapid iteration and rapid feedback creates motivations which, in some ways, are antithetical to the moral imperative we as engineers should all feel. That of creating technology that is secure, private and stable. We don't need another password breach, we don't need another growth metric driven app the belies the privacy invasions that power that growth metric.

Make old ideas better, make new ideas mature.

Re: Just Launch the Damn Thing

#3

Post by corytheboyd »

Ah yes this discussion. As always, I will chime in saying what I always say.

While it's true that you need to begin the iteration process with real customers sooner rather than later, you still have to actually build something for them to use. This is still going to be very hard work.

Yes, don't build features nobody has asked for yet, but do completely deliver on at least one core feature that actually makes people want more. Also, if you're a small team, and you crank out sub-par and not very well understood foundations, you're running the very real risk of having it all fall apart from underneath you when the first thing goes wrong. Again, don't go full k8s if you don't need to, but it's still very important to have a solid grasp on every aspect of your system.

You can't just skip the hard parts and get to the money printer. Or maybe you can, in which case, consider me jealous!

Re: Just Launch the Damn Thing

#6

Post by toast0 »

dabockster wrote: post #4

I prefer the middle ground: do some planning and optimization so I don’t release a freaking PWA monster into the world, then have to stall later while I figure out how to maintain the darn thing.

The point of the article is that stalling later, when you have a better idea or what people want (and maybe some revenue, maybe?) is better than stalling now, when you have no customers.

Launching something that clearly nobody will use because it can't do anything is clearly a waste of time still, but if you have something that people will use despite its flaws, maybe it's time to launch.

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