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The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

kitze.io

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

#111

Post by s_dev »

pcwelder wrote: post #92

I have an opposite story. I created a reddit bot that recommended some words to the users on https://reddit.com/r/whatstheword subreddit posts. I could've done a lot of things to improve quality, but it looked good as a first draft and shipped it following that philosophy. It turned out to be buggy, and the bot ended up getting banned after an overnight run. So I think "just ship it" applies only in a large market wh…

How would you know that the bot would have been banned without shipping? What is preventing you from improving and re-releasing the bot? Sounds like you got the fast feedback you needed from shipping.

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

#113

Post by quickthrower2 »

rozenmd wrote: post #61
karterk wrote: post #22

> My app is officially dead. Most markets are large enough to accommodate several businesses. There's really no reason to stop working on something just because you find that there is already someone solving that same problem. Who knows, they will shut it down at some point, or might head upmarket or pivot to a tangential area.

I'm sitting here running the 200th uptime monitoring service, laughing at the notion you have to be first to ship a solution to a problem. Build something good, that people want, and iterate rapidly as feedback comes in.

I think an uptime monitoring service will be my back up idea. It is like a pizza business, you can always find people who want pizza and who will rave about your pizza. Dominos and Pizza Hut are not a problem.

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

#114

Post by martindbp »

krallja wrote: post #77
martindbp wrote: post #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 t…

> it sure was easier back in, say, 2012 I was on HN in 2012. It was not any easier. People said the same thing back then. “Oh, if only I had gotten started in 2005, with DHTML, when things were easier.” “I wish I was paying attention when iPhone app store came out.” Just because you missed one boat doesn’t mean you’ll miss the next one. Keep an eye out for it. «History merely repeats itself. It has all been done befo…

I hope you're right!

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

#116

Post by rglover »

> "After 2 years of development, juggling between the fucking horror that's the web platform, React Native, Expo, GraphQL, bitching about how there's no ideal tech stack, the good old jQuery and Filezilla days, switching to other projects, releasing other apps, losing passion, finding passion, coming back to the app, etc. etc. etc..."

There is now. https://github.com/cheatcode/joystick

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

#117

Post by jacquesm »

Markstar wrote: post #107
jacquesm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure they don't claim copyright on your code.

Thank you for the heads up, but I don't see how. They were not part of the development and have no financial involvement. Hmm, now that I think about it, I am going to the conference as affiliate of the university... :/

All it would take is that they specified what to build and claimed that you never sent them an invoice but that it was work for hire regardless.

Remember that they are much bigger than you and if there is money involved they may well act irrational, and as a smaller party this can be very unnerving and costly.

Best to make sure that you have it spelled out that the code is yours, stick a big fat copyright sign on top of it and if possible get them on the record that it is clear that the rights belong to you. When in doubt, consult and IP lawyer.

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

#118

Post by marcosdumay »

mwcampbell wrote: post #81
spamizbad wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is extremely true. I think some people are "maximizers" - They will always do research to seek out the "best" for their given budget for even moderately priced purchases. Engineers tend to fit this profile, so its easy for them to get psyched-out when trying to ship a product. But people - and businesses - aren't always like this. They will buy what's available and seems to get the job done and seems like less o…

It's worse if we routinely read highly critical message boards like this one. I'm currently developing a desktop app using Electron, but comments like this [1] make me wonder if I should scrap it and start over using purely Rust and/or C++. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31350035

Nah, if you do really believe creating what is effectively a web app is faster than a proper desktop one, go ahead and create it.

The only useful recommendation here is that, when you have some time, and don't have to rewrite an entire app, and if you expect to target the desktop again, you will gain from learning desktop frameworks. But absolutely not now while you are on the middle of something.

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

#120

Post by jschveibinz »

“The MVP was ready in a few days. I'm not that good of a coder, it's just a simple app.”

This sentence is incredibly important. If a MVP is ready in 3 days, then how valuable can that product be?

When literally everyone has access to tools that they believe can result in something marketable in only a few days, then we have achieved the time when nobody makes money from software. Thoughts?

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