Live data from Hacker News

The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

kitze.io

1–10 of 253 posts

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#3
A big fallacy that I always see - and that is implied by this post - is that the work ends after shipping, a.k.a. "build it and they will come". That doesn't happen any more. So after you "ship" it, you need to promote it, advertise it, create buzz around it and make people use it. And that is a totally different kind of beast than coding something.

But on the flip side, if you develop a side project just for yourself, you most certainly learn something. Heck, the author explicitly mentioned learning React Native, which is absolutely great and definitely worth investing time into.

Learning things is valuable in itself.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#5
Yep, I'm there, been going for a year, it's amazing how quickly time passes by. Getting ready to ship, for realsies this time. Maybe I'm imagining, but due to the unimaginable number of apps and SaaS out there today, it's not as easy to put out something you're embarrassed about. The only way to do that is to have something extremely small and polished, in which case it's almost certainly been done already multiple times. I'm sure there are some niches still to be filled, but it sure was easier back in, say, 2012.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#7
post #2

I know it doesn't matter for the point the author is trying to make but, Such a tease, what does the app do?

Given they got suspicious about if their idea was stolen, it'd be interesting if the app solves something unique, or some very common problem.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#8
post #3

A big fallacy that I always see - and that is implied by this post - is that the work ends after shipping, a.k.a. "build it and they will come". That doesn't happen any more. So after you "ship" it, you need to promote it, advertise it, create buzz around it and make people use it. And that is a totally different kind of beast than coding something. But on the flip side, if you develop a side project just for yoursel…

Yes, Given they couldn't develop the app without planning the release, I wonder if they'd have time to properly support it if they shipped..

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#9
post #2

I know it doesn't matter for the point the author is trying to make but, Such a tease, what does the app do?

I remember he at some point had a landing page for a browser that would show you a web page in multiple resolutions, all at once, with hot reload. Not sure if this is the application, he might have had another one.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#10
post #2

I know it doesn't matter for the point the author is trying to make but, Such a tease, what does the app do?

I remember he at some point had a landing page for a browser that would show you a web page in multiple resolutions, all at once, with hot reload. Not sure if this is the application, he might have had another one.

Yes, he made Sizzy, and it's apparently very successful. Here's the story (quite well told I think): https://kitze.io/posts/github-stars-wont-pay-your-rent
Post reply on HN