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Pros and cons of solo development

johnjeffers.com

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Re: Pros and cons of solo development

#41

Post by sublinear »

efromvt wrote: post #38
sublinear wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most projects don't need telemetry. They need better logs. On the backend... Why wouldn't you log every request that hits your server, and why wouldn't you already know what those requests mean? Why would you let your frontend make direct requests to any other server when you can just proxy it yourself and maintain control? On the frontend... What's so hard about wrapping all your event listeners and periodically sen…

If you don't have a backend, then it's all telemetry, right? And backend logs don't capture a lot of the UX side of things - how a call got triggered, from where, etc (which yeah you can start to instrument, but then that's telemetry).

I agree, but my point was there are too many sedimentary layers of vocabulary put there by the marketing and checklist people. If they didn't obscure and paywall basic functionality, they wouldn't have a business.

In my example (assuming a web view, but similar mechanisms exist for native), the event wrapper would give a lot of context if the event target string is logged. That will contain the query selector. It should already be best practice to have unique and human-readable IDs on every interactive element in the DOM anyway.

Sloppy frontend builds are a topic for another time, though.

If there's no server, you should at least still proxy these logs to your own domain. The vast majority of sites are just pasting a generated script tag or cluttering their build. The "right way" is just as easy.

Re: Pros and cons of solo development

#43

Post by oooyay »

johnj-hn wrote: post #31
lelanthran wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps. I think AI changes the equation here. Honestly, AI changes what "solo developer" even means. I disagree; it's even more obvious with AI that, with AI, a solo dev can go even faster, but still, with AI, you need a team to go further.

Can you talk a little about what "further" means to you?

I see OP responded but I'd add on that "further" can mean product vision and pivots. When you're the only one in the room that voice is limited; even when you may have only listened to 1% of these pitches it may be the one you never would've come up with.

It can mean the power of delegation and creativity. The worst kind of teams are monocular, democratically oriented teams where every member must be on and act in the same manner. It's great for efficiency, it's horrible for productivity and creativity.

Re: Pros and cons of solo development

#44

Post by dofm »

jdwyah wrote: post #40
dofm wrote: post #6

Lessons from my failure: - do everything you can to keep burnout at bay - you do, in fact, need a holiday - hyperfocus is not your friend, ever ; if you feel you can’t put it down, you must put it down - never delete emails; the one thing you can guarantee is that you will need an email you deleted - if you look back at your notes and they are not instantly obvious, rewrite them while you still remember what you mean…

always this. I had a $5/month thing. Made a $20/month option that barely had more features. Sold lotsa seats. Rewrote it. $10 and $50 plans. $50 is most popular. But a day after I launched I got a new payment for $360. Damn, I thought, Claude must've screwed something up. Nope, just somebody going straight into the Yearly option of the $50 (that I hadn't realized Claude added (with a discount)).

Someone told me that you have to have more expensive plans for people to have the confidence to try your cheap plans, which is sort of upside down at first glance and then you think, oh no, I'm like that. It's true.

Re: Pros and cons of solo development

#46

Post by tonyedgecombe »

MattDamonSpace wrote: post #36
lelanthran wrote: post #14

The rule to remember about solo development: Alone I can go faster, together we can go further! Everything else boils down to this.

“We need to go far, fast”

We already run a marathon by turning it into a series of sprints.

Re: Pros and cons of solo development

#47

Post by skydhash »

Kon5ole wrote: post #35
lelanthran wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps. I think AI changes the equation here. Honestly, AI changes what "solo developer" even means. I disagree; it's even more obvious with AI that, with AI, a solo dev can go even faster, but still, with AI, you need a team to go further.

In the time it takes me to make a single-node webservice with a CLI POC client I can now have a fully scalable SAAS with clients for iOS, Android, mac, linux, windows and web-based, user documentation in several languages and a suite of unit tests. Surely that's both faster and further? IMO AI agents are like a team of remote consultants that only talk shop and have no sense of humor.

> I can now have a fully scalable SAAS with clients for iOS, Android, mac, linux, windows and web-based, user documentation in several languages and a suite of unit tests.

Which you won’t be brave enough to put on the internet.

Re: Pros and cons of solo development

#49

Post by skydhash »

efromvt wrote: post #38
sublinear wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most projects don't need telemetry. They need better logs. On the backend... Why wouldn't you log every request that hits your server, and why wouldn't you already know what those requests mean? Why would you let your frontend make direct requests to any other server when you can just proxy it yourself and maintain control? On the frontend... What's so hard about wrapping all your event listeners and periodically sen…

If you don't have a backend, then it's all telemetry, right? And backend logs don't capture a lot of the UX side of things - how a call got triggered, from where, etc (which yeah you can start to instrument, but then that's telemetry).

I would say: Never solve problems for people you don’t know. First solve for yourself. Then solve for people in your community. Someone reaching out with a suggestion is more valuable than bazillion of analytics.

Re: Pros and cons of solo development

#50

Post by convolvatron »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #46
MattDamonSpace wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We need to go far, fast”

We already run a marathon by turning it into a series of sprints.

we completely fail to run a marathon by turning the notion of distance covered into completely fictional metric, and anathematize the idea of setting targets beyond that two weeks since that requires collaboration and forethought. by attempting to run a marathon in a completely stateless way we end up walking in a brownian fashion but get thoroughly exhausted by the process even though we aren't getting anywhere really.
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