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Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)

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Re: Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)

#52

Post by ecuzzillo »

morris wrote: post #51
mattmaroon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people have a strong dislike of Aaron. I've certainly had unpleasant experiences.

Such as?

I expect Matt will have more personal bad experiences, but the most well-publicized one goes approximately as follows:

- Aaron applies to YC, starts Infogami with a co-founder who drops out (presumably because of Aaron's special interpersonal sparkles).

- Aaron launches Infogami, with a promise of a new feature every day.

- Aaron complains for a long time about how he doesn't have a co-founder, and then merges with Reddit.

- Aaron abandons Infogami (pissing off all its users, including me), and then proceeds not to do anything at Reddit, to the chagrin of the Reddits, who just effectively gave him a bunch of their stock. Aaron nevertheless has time for nauseatingly many melodramatic blog entries. - Reddit gets bought, and Aaron gets an equal share of the spoils.

- Aaron cries in the bathroom (literally), and then quits Wired, the acquiring company, by just not showing up to work. (And posts a suicidal blog entry, and proceeds to delete it.)

- Aaron does an interview in which he claims to have been part of Reddit from the beginning, pissing absolutely everyone off.

Re: Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)

#53

Post by morris »

ecuzzillo wrote: post #52
morris wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as?

I expect Matt will have more personal bad experiences, but the most well-publicized one goes approximately as follows: - Aaron applies to YC, starts Infogami with a co-founder who drops out (presumably because of Aaron's special interpersonal sparkles). - Aaron launches Infogami, with a promise of a new feature every day. - Aaron complains for a long time about how he doesn't have a co-founder, and then merges with R…

I think thats a great reason for the Reddit guys to be pissed off at him - I just didn't realize anyone on this forum has had personal interactions with him.

Re: Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)

#54

Post by nirs »

oditogre wrote: post #31
rms wrote: post #28

http://beta.jottit.com/

http://beta.jottit.com/8dw3p/ http://HowDoesJottitFormattingWork.jottit.com (same site in theory...doesn't seem to be working, though.) Anybody know of where you can get more instructions on how to use it? Handy for throwing together a random anonymous blog, I guess. Ad-supported, I assume?

This beta is amusing - while he talk about perfectionism, he is releasing a beta with severe XSS issues.

Re: Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)

#55

Post by steve »

omouse wrote: post #40
nirs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks a lot like infogami, just more broken :-)

Yeah, I don't get why he would want to try with this again. Why doesn't he focus on web.py and promoting it? That would be much more fulfilling than creating a wiki/note-jotting site.

Ohh but how your perception will change when you see his site achieve a state of perfection:)

Hah, anyway I myself do enjoy webpy and wouldn't mind giving something back to it, but if I were him I'd probably rather do a startup.

Re: Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)

#56

Post by steve »

morris wrote: post #53
ecuzzillo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect Matt will have more personal bad experiences, but the most well-publicized one goes approximately as follows: - Aaron applies to YC, starts Infogami with a co-founder who drops out (presumably because of Aaron's special interpersonal sparkles). - Aaron launches Infogami, with a promise of a new feature every day. - Aaron complains for a long time about how he doesn't have a co-founder, and then merges with R…

I think thats a great reason for the Reddit guys to be pissed off at him - I just didn't realize anyone on this forum has had personal interactions with him.

Agreed, so what if his startup fails and he doesn't release a feature per day as he promised? That's what startups (usually) do. They fail. Shouldn't hold that against him personally.

As far as the reddit guys go, there's a reason you're not supposed to do a startup with your closest friends. Aren't you supposed to hate your partner to some degree by the end? I know I did... But I understand that to be normal so I just relax and don't let that anger bother me outside of work.

Re: Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)

#57

Post by bootload »

omouse wrote: post #40
nirs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks a lot like infogami, just more broken :-)

Yeah, I don't get why he would want to try with this again. Why doesn't he focus on web.py and promoting it? That would be much more fulfilling than creating a wiki/note-jotting site.

"... Why doesn't he focus on web.py and promoting it? ..."

The focus is there. I've been lurking the web.py mail list for a long time (Jan 19, 2006 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/88347878/ ) and there has been a steady progression of code since then. So in my view it is being promoted, worked on and improved. 

   "The programmers were in the corner doing what they were told. 
    That's one reason they were so easy to outsource. If a programmer 
    never really talks to the customer, never thinks, just solves little 
    puzzles, well that's a perfect candidate for something to offshore." 
    ~ Founders at Work, Ch24, Philip Greenspun, P325, Livingston, 2007.
But instead of just promoting just another bit of technology, maybe it's better to do something with it. A lot of technology is commodity that can be replicated by some programmer in the corner. Build useful things with it, creating value is a lot harder to commoditise.

Re: Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)

#58

Post by euccastro »

omouse wrote: post #40
nirs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks a lot like infogami, just more broken :-)

Yeah, I don't get why he would want to try with this again. Why doesn't he focus on web.py and promoting it? That would be much more fulfilling than creating a wiki/note-jotting site.

I don't think there is much point in telling him what would be more fulfilling to him.

Re: Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)

#59

Post by steve »

omouse wrote: post #15

"There is something to this, of course. But I have a contrary proposal: users love perfectionism." Wrong. I would love to see more new features on reddit rather than waiting for them to re-write everything. The search function is still somewhat broken! There is even competition of sorts: http://redditmedia.com/ That site displays thumbnails for stories...why doesn't reddit.com have an extra section or option/setting…

Almost,

Success is paralyzing.

Re: Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)

#60

Post by steve »

champion wrote: post #17

Funny, since Aaron had exactly the opposite strategy when he launched Infogami, blogging about launching a new feature everyday and taking a very incremental approach. I don't think that lasted very long though. Everyone is free to change their mind, of course...

It is good that he chose an extreme though. Publicity tends to like extremes, regardless of which extreme it is.
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