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It's okay to make something nobody wants

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Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#151

Post by GMoromisato »

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/

I agree with you—particularly about shipping.

I used to worry about shipping because I thought “you only get one chance to make a good impression.”

But as long as you use negative feedback to improve, you will always[1] get another chance! Statistically speaking, 0% of the world has seen your product.

[1] Obligatory disclaimer that if you really fuck up, you don’t get another chance. But that’s super rare.

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#152

Post by duxup »

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.

Bad code, bad products are better than none.

And you might be surprised how bad it is or isn’t….

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#153

Post by csydas »

barrysteve wrote: post #141
csydas wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

i get what you’re saying, but i don’t see those as true hierarchies either. they suffer the same issues and problems as described above.

the simple idea of implicit authority because of rank or position does not seem to work as soon as there is an incentive to misuse it; i don’t know what the answer is to this but i don’t really subscribe that the majority of the hierarchies matter so much.

the open source model of “just fork it if you don’t agree” isn’t great, but i would say it’s a start. maintainers define the goal and purpose of the project, but if you don’t like the rules, fork and go your separate ways. this is vastly simplified of course, but i think it better represents a model that would be reasonable for a hierarchy.

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#154

Post by wsve »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #148

:) 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 thi…

This is extremely cute and I'm glad you shared this :)

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#155

Post by meiraleal »

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.

> This community especially can be very toxic to people that are starting out, that aren't geniuses, that didn't make every perfect decision for their product.

Start through another community then? It is nobody's fault if you can't impress people. But I find people being very welcoming here to bad ideas and half-baked products that are absolutely low quality and soon gets abandoned.

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#156

Post by levi0214 »

Hi, I'm the author.

Originally I didn't want to post it here because I hardly ever post anything on HN and guess no one would read it.

But the feelings were strong and I really wanted to tell people what I was feeling.

After I posted it on HN that day, it sunk quickly, and sure enough no one read it, so I didn't go back to HN to check on it.

Until this evening, when I got a text from a stranger saying thank you for the post. I was surprised and opened HN to find it was at the top.

Thank you all for reading it.

In a way I put this article into practice, I put my emotions in my product (article) and you extracted from it.

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#157

Post by toast0 »

barrysteve wrote: post #85
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.

I'd like to point out the opposite. I made a game with a group of well educated friends back in the mid 2000s. It was released (against agreements) when the core gameplay was roughly-in place, but all the art assets were 'programmer art'. It made the top ten worst Steam Greenlight games (on some dead blog) and attracted huge quantities of negative criticism. Even though it was never linked to my public reputation and…

Hey, most games never get on a top ten list. That's an achievement!

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#159

Post by SeanAnderson »

wsve wrote: post #154
SeanAnderson wrote: post #148

:) 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 thi…

This is extremely cute and I'm glad you shared this :)

Glad you liked it! Thanks for taking a look.

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#160

Post by drewchew »

levi0214 wrote: post #156

Hi, I'm the author. Originally I didn't want to post it here because I hardly ever post anything on HN and guess no one would read it. But the feelings were strong and I really wanted to tell people what I was feeling. After I posted it on HN that day, it sunk quickly, and sure enough no one read it, so I didn't go back to HN to check on it. Until this evening, when I got a text from a stranger saying thank you for t…

Glad to be the bearer of fun news :)
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