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It's okay to make something nobody wants

zhangluyao.com

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Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#141

Post by barrysteve »

csydas wrote: post #139
barrysteve wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve had the kind of ego-less pride that has existed in the US since time immemorial. He pushed his image much more than normal, though. The power in heirarchies, is not the title, but the relationships between 'brothers' inside it. Titles are closer to recognition of your 'mission' or 'role' in the organization. Being part of a heirarchy in name only, being part of a heirarchy only for the title, is a slippery slop…

> The power in heirarchies, is not the title, but the relationships between 'brothers' inside it. I would disagree to an extent -- for those in the brotherhood, yes it's about the relationships; for the rest, it's about the title(s). The hierarchy exists as an exclusionary barrier ensuring those outside it respect the hierarchy, while those inside play with the hierarchy of the brotherhood. From my experiences across…

Businesses and corporations need a heirarchy to withhold knowledge and information from outsiders and 'insiders hungry enough to be dangerous'.

But the natural state for a heirarchy is in an institution, or a military, or a government.

As soon as you make money, your final measure of existence, heirarchy is crippled (to varying degrees) as a concept.

Heirarchy in a business is nearly identical as keeping people 'on a shelf' ready to be deployed onto the storm and stress of work. Businesses heirarchies are flatter, often chaotic and lose rigour and discipline, anytime someone sees financial benefit in bending the rules.

A pure heirachy like something seen on a british navy frigate, or in a religious instution, is a better mental model for the concept. Business needs, flatten out what the ideal concept is capable of producing.

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#143

Post by barrysteve »

stavros wrote: post #110
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #108

I do it all the time. I'd say that 90% of the work I've done, over the last couple of decades, has lain fallow, died quietly in a corner, or been outright rejected. But that 10%... If nothing else, it's practice. But, whatever it is, we always need to power through the "boring bits," to make our dream a reality.

10% is a good percentage, it's been 0% for me. Then again, my best art project has been https://imgz.org , which I knew wasn't really going to get used much by other people.

Your website lists an alternative method, not owned by you, for the service you provide.

This deeply resonates with me for some implicit reason I don't understand. It comes off as respectable.

Thank you!

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#144

Post by julianeon »

bsnnkv wrote: post #31

This article resonated with me a lot and had me reflecting on my journey writing komorebi. I started writing komorebi because I had recently migrated to Windows and was really struggling without a tiling window manager. I didn't know anything about Win32 APIs when I started, or much about Rust either, actually. Fast forward to today, and komorebi is sitting at 35k downloads, supported by a huge Discord server, a vibr…

Nice work!

One reason why I went 100% Linux was because I couldn't find a window manager equivalent elsewhere that was anywhere close to i3. And yours, to me, looks competitive with i3.

The window manager has been the one killer feature that was just not available at the same level on MacOS or Windows. It's nice to see that changing.

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#145

Post by paulryanrogers »

davnicwil wrote: post #113
hermannj314 wrote: post #81

I wasted a lot of my life being too scared to make something out of fear. This community especially can be very toxic to people that are starting out, that aren't geniuses, that didnt make every perfect decision for their product. Life is more enjoyable in a create-fail-learn loop than a consume-criticize-gloat loop. I wish I'd learned that sooner.

A negative reception to putting a product out there is actually a really great outcome. It shows you are doing something right if this happens. The expected and typical outcome is to be completely ignored - crickets. This is perhaps the main reason you should not fear shipping! I have a post which elaborates on this if it's interesting for anyone: https://davnicwil.com/negative-feedback-is-positive/

Negative feedback is a signal, yet not a guaranteed good. It could also just mean someone stumbled into your product and found it fatally flawed. Sometimes one needs to hear hard things.

Then again when building only for myself all feedback (or lack thereof) is irrelevant!

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#146

Post by stavros »

barrysteve wrote: post #143
stavros wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10% is a good percentage, it's been 0% for me. Then again, my best art project has been https://imgz.org , which I knew wasn't really going to get used much by other people.

Your website lists an alternative method, not owned by you, for the service you provide. This deeply resonates with me for some implicit reason I don't understand. It comes off as respectable. Thank you!

Haha, thanks!

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#147

Post by barrysteve »

xwdv wrote: post #98

What’s with the sappy, weepy tone here? If someone made a household cleaning detergent or some vitamin powder that nobody wanted, would we still be saying these products aren’t really for users, but rather are just another medium of self expression? Is it okay for them to still exist? Sure, it’s also okay to be a loser . Seen through a capitalist lens, the point of a product is to serve a useful purpose. If nobody wa…

Good luck making something as big as cattle if you can't even make dogs, or mice.

Good luck avoiding burn out, making nothing but cattle all day long.

Sometimes, making a peacock will get you laid. Sometimes, making a dove will being you peace of mind.

Sometimes making a turtle will teach your child how to make (eventually) cattle too.

The market sure is a conversation, and I'm impressed by developers that can create cattle AND peacocks, doves, turtles and dogs.

A guy that makes only what the market wants, is kind of boring? Or have I overstated it?

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#148

Post by SeanAnderson »

:) I'm making something nobody wants right now and it's going great. It's giving my life the most purpose it's had in a few years. It's a financial disaster, of course, but trading money for personal fulfillment is a sweet deal IMO.

(and a shameless plug...)

https://ant.care/ if you want to derp around with a digital ant colony for a bit. The nest devolves into a mess after a couple of days tops right now.

If you think you've got ideas on how to improve the tunnel/chamber/nest expansion logic, or if you're better at implementing sand fall physics in Rust/ECS than me, I'd love to chat!

Discord: https://discord.gg/Ckm6m4A2 Code: https://github.com/MeoMix/symbiants

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#149

Post by emodendroket »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #39
emodendroket wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it solves a problem they have?

How will that happen? If I don't know anything about photography, and don't even like it much, certainly don't care about it, my photography app will be garbage. Precisely as so many apps are garbage.

I think I am quite capable of developing understanding of a domain and building a tool to solve a problem in it even if I don’t personally care that much about it. There’s plenty of software out there solving problems it’s hard to imagine much of anyone feeling passionate about.

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#150

Post by thenoblesunfish »

An inspiring take, but like all things, it's a balancing act. There is great satisfaction in making things people want. The fact that you get money for this biases everything that way, but as plenty of academics and experimental artists will tell you, it can also be soul crushing to make things no one wants.
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