video games are guilty of this too, and the proliferation of Unity and Unreal is partly due to an overoptimization for prototypes
Tech takes the Pareto principle too far
51–60 of 127 posts
Re: Tech takes the Pareto principle too far
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who cares. The meaning is apparent and the structure is coherent. A well written comment, so these things seem too minor to call out IMO. What's more, these days if you include some strategic typos, you help convince me that you're not a lazy slop-poster, or an outright bot.
ChatGPT can you write me a response that includes enough typos to look human, but not enough that I look like a prince from Nigeria tracking down relatives to give them money?
I don't disagree but as long as 95% of people forget to do this, it's still a useful heuristic, i guess...
Re: Tech takes the Pareto principle too far
#53Yeah, let me drop one example: JIRA.
Re: Tech takes the Pareto principle too far
#54video games are guilty of this too, and the proliferation of Unity and Unreal is partly due to an overoptimization for prototypes
A lot of Unity and Unreal games seem to have one thing in common: unoptimized slop with garbage performance with smeary TAA and needing a 4090 GPU to get decent performance.
Game studios don't care about optimizations anymore, they care about shoveling something out the door as quickly and as cheaply as possible.
Re: Tech takes the Pareto principle too far
#55In terms of economics and utility, the last 80% of effort produces 20% of the result. But the last 80% give us something much more that isn’t quantified: The feeling of having completed something of value, and having done it properly, carries an inherent value that surpasses the last 20% output. It is unquantifiable and priceless. This is when work or products become timeless and truly valuable. Not to mention that f…
> the last 80% give us something much more that isn’t quantified: The feeling of having completed something of value, and having done it properly, carries an inherent value that surpasses the last 20% output. It is unquantifiable and priceless. This is when work or products become timeless and truly valuable. Not to mention that feeling of satisfaction and completeness of taking an accomplishment to that level.
This is why software development _as a job_ sucks, and sucks deeply: how often do you get to put the icing on the cake, and put a ribbon on it, and get a final effort that matches what you were able to envision ?
"Job" satisfaction is for _hobbyist_ software development. Capitalism generates crap software.
Re: Tech takes the Pareto principle too far
#56While I appreciate that the author put in the time and effort to write this, I have to say that I disagree with pretty much all of this. Beyond quibbling about specific points, the MVP and the Vertical Slice are functionally similar they totally different in their purpose. Video Games are generally competing for a slice of a large preexisting market. The test is whether it can compete against existing products. A new…
>A new to the world software start up is trying to serve a need that is currently unserved.
man, really? 99% of software is basically glorified CRUD view for some DB. it's nothing novel.
If we venture outside of corporate software: most startups do not create anything novel - they just monetize existing businesses in a different(usually more predatory) way, or do X but digital. both usually go for 'virtual monopoly' by: offering service(never a product!) for free -> capture the market -> enshittify -> new startups repeats the cycle.
The actual novelty where you find a need that is unserved is sub 0.1% of them.
In reality you aim for product that fits current buzzword meta for funding.
I do 100% agree that product-market-fit is probably the thing you should try to get ASAP though.
Re: Tech takes the Pareto principle too far
#57While I appreciate that the author put in the time and effort to write this, I have to say that I disagree with pretty much all of this. Beyond quibbling about specific points, the MVP and the Vertical Slice are functionally similar they totally different in their purpose. Video Games are generally competing for a slice of a large preexisting market. The test is whether it can compete against existing products. A new…
>A new to the world software start up is trying to serve a need that is currently unserved. man, really? 99% of software is basically glorified CRUD view for some DB. it's nothing novel. If we venture outside of corporate software: most startups do not create anything novel - they just monetize existing businesses in a different(usually more predatory) way, or do X but digital. both usually go for 'virtual monopoly'…
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Re: Tech takes the Pareto principle too far
#58What if we come to a point where even the investors don't care if you can finish a product at all? If the pitch is good enough and they think you can bring in more investors down the road, they will get back their money at a higher evaluation anyway. This would actually explain why so many startups fail – nobody cared for them to succeed anyway, because the initial investors got rich even without there being a product.
Re: Tech takes the Pareto principle too far
#59While I appreciate that the author put in the time and effort to write this, I have to say that I disagree with pretty much all of this. Beyond quibbling about specific points, the MVP and the Vertical Slice are functionally similar they totally different in their purpose. Video Games are generally competing for a slice of a large preexisting market. The test is whether it can compete against existing products. A new…
>A new to the world software start up is trying to serve a need that is currently unserved. man, really? 99% of software is basically glorified CRUD view for some DB. it's nothing novel. If we venture outside of corporate software: most startups do not create anything novel - they just monetize existing businesses in a different(usually more predatory) way, or do X but digital. both usually go for 'virtual monopoly'…
That's the point. It's not supposed to be technologically novel, at least at start. It's a new business. The innovation is in the business part.
When we were in Rome and exited the Colosseum, it started raining. Some random dude walked to us and sold us an umbrella. Great business, both of us were better off.
Re: Tech takes the Pareto principle too far
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s also worth mentioning that the author fundamentally misunderstands a MVP. A vertical slice video game presentation _is_ a kind of MVP, and there are tons of anecdotes e.g. from the E3 that tell us just how minimal these can be. MVPs take different shapes and forms, a polished but limited video game level is no different than a polished landing page with functionality limited to e.g. sign up.
The most equivalent milestone to MVP in games is first playable (FP) or prototype. This is done at first pass/L1/greybox quality. Vertical slice (VS) is a type of beautiful corner — this is done at production quality. The purpose of FP is to prove the game loop and that a game is worth producing — that it is viable, or you could say that it has reached the minimum viable state. The purpose of VS is to try out the ent…
Thanks for these insights. I was not aware of this.