The real problem I face is finding users. you are not allowed to post your app anywhere (excluding hn). It's called advertising or spam they say
There's hundreds of thousands of apps. People aren't going to invest any effort in evaluating them.
The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)
171–180 of 316 posts
Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)
#172I wholeheartedly agree with this, when I started working on Kviklet we were a team of 3 and one of us was a lot more perfectionist than the others. It took a lot of convincing to even put our (tbf shitty) first website version up. Much more to release our repo. We lost that "co-founder" early on, but man I'm glad we released early and tried to sell. It didn't work and we found no buyers but imagine we still were work…
> Pull Request-like Review/Approval flow for database queries Terrible description IMO. a query should not need approval. Should use mutation or edit or update or modification. Even if query is technically correct it just sounds wrong and confusing.
No, that's just what everyone calls SQL statements. It's fine.
I like this idea. It sits between "developers have access to prod" (no! bad idea!) and requiring everything to be signed in triplicate. It provides a low-friction way to make reviewable changes to prod.
Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is a terrible take, and one I generally see as a signal of lack of seniority in a software dev. It is absolutely everybody's job in the company to make sure it is profitable, unless you work for a non-profit. Developers aren't compensated for any extraordinary achievement, though. Unless they own a notable share of the company. So, why should they give everything and get nothing back? How is that fair? Salespe…
Developers aren't compensated for any extraordinary achievement, though. Unless they own a notable share of the company. So, why should they give everything and get nothing back? How is that fair Get nothing?! What a strange way to view a paycheque. "Hi, you're only paying me, but that's not enough to expect a solid work ethic. Instead, I'll make sure my work is just passable. Want more, and now you have to pay me mo…
"I'll make sure my work is just passable" is a very strange interpretation of the original statement, which was "if more time makes your work more professional, then take more time."
You are not being paid enough to rack up tech debt during 80 hour weeks constantly moving from one sales-driven project to the next, because that's a stupid way to develop software and it'll burn you out after a year of back-to-back "why isn't XYZ done?"/"why didn't you make XYZ not buggy?" meetings, at which point you'd better have made enough money to retire to the Bahamas.
Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)
#174"If you have an idea, statistically 1500 other people are also having that same idea" Execution trumps ideas. It also does not need to be fast! I have seen it go all ways at this point, and I still stand by another stupid quote, "slow and steady wins the race". The real problem lies in whether you mature your idea into something with long term value. If you ask me, fast ideas, fast execution = garbage in, garbage out.
Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)
#175There's massive caveat with all of these "and then the story ends because we didn't just ship it :(" stories: sometimes the value of the "app" you're working on is in the technical details that cannot really be "hastened" and you can't "just ship it". Also, and this is something a lot of the managerial class people don't want to hear: Your job as a sw engineer/architect is to resist the "just ship it" pressure from t…
There's usually an entire pipeline of people waiting on your work - sales & marketing, ops, support - and every delay you induce risks knock-on effects for them, not to mention that depending on the product, customers can be planning their own workloads around your release schedules, so you'll mess them up too. Not all deadlines are arbitrary.
Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn’t need to be shipped to the public. He shared videos with people, and those same people can be the first users of the MVP. The point of an MVP is to elicit feedback, know you’re on the right track to build something useful, and iterate.
"It doesn’t need to be shipped to the public" Ok, I took it by the usual meaning of ship it to the market. Not having people test it.
I think also, it’s not just “people”, but “people that you hypothesise have a problem that you’re aiming to solve”, and perhaps even “… and have money that they can and want to spend on solving it”
Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the wrong framing of it, shipping is an internal mental battle, not an external one. We are not perfectly rational automatons that always work towards our rational best interests. Shipping is hard so we create mental battles inside ourselves to avoid it and use post-hoc justifications to feel morally ok with that decision. The choice of when to ship isn't nearly as important as the answer to why you aren't sh…
What do you mean by “not shipping on the choice you made to ship”? Do you have an example? Really fascinating thoughts.
Like what the article stated. “I should ship this week but I really feel we need a mobile app to ship.”
You build the mobile app and you still don’t ship because the mobile app was not the problem, it just hid the problem. Until you understand and confront the true problem (emotional discomfort at the consequences of shipping), there will always be another reason not to ship.
Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)
#178Not the best example of "just ship it". The thing about these productivity apps (TODO, habit tracking, spending tracking, journaling, workout planning etc.) is that lots of people have these ideas independently. You can't imagine how clever I felt when I thought of the idea of an app that helps you keep track of your expenses. Then I checked the Play Store. KRAZAM even made fun of it the "The Hustle" video 5 years ag…
> Then I checked the Play Store
I think you missed the point of the article, which is to ship it despite competitors; in fact, competitors validate your idea, it is a good sign, not a bad one.
Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll give you any one of 3 or 4 ideas right now, if you want them. They're ideas I'd develop if I had the time, energy and brainpower. I've got personal connections for you too, if you want them, people who need the product. I won't even ask 50%, heck, 5% sounds fine by me. My experience has been that, while that is useful, it's by no means sufficient to lead to a complete and useful tool. But I'd absolutely take tha…
Can I hit you up for one those in September if my current thing doesn't work out? Completely serious.
Sure thing, goes for folks reading this too.
Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)
#180There's massive caveat with all of these "and then the story ends because we didn't just ship it :(" stories: sometimes the value of the "app" you're working on is in the technical details that cannot really be "hastened" and you can't "just ship it". Also, and this is something a lot of the managerial class people don't want to hear: Your job as a sw engineer/architect is to resist the "just ship it" pressure from t…
> Your job as a sw engineer/architect is to resist the "just ship it" pressure from the management as much as possible. So unless you own what you're coding and you really need it out of the door for your own benefit, if more time makes your work more professional, then take more time. Anyone telling you otherwise is a 100% hack. You are not an automaton that takes in JIRA tickets and spits out hacky code as soon as…
My boss says our goal is to make quality products, but often we don't even have time to check the parts.
Once there was a problem that machine didn't make good enough surface finish, but boss just said it's fine, let it run. Turns out it wasn't fine and we had to fix 3000 parts with hand sander. That's why I don't like to cut corners.