81–90 of 208 posts
Life is more enjoyable in a create-fail-learn loop than a consume-criticize-gloat loop.
I wish I'd learned that sooner.
"I think it’s okay to make something that nobody wants. All you need to do is to make sure you’ve fully expressed your emotions in this product." Having hobbies is fine, but it's not a business model.
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 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 I found it hilarious at the time...
It did make me very hesistant and perfectionist in future projects and took out a certain amount of faith that 'it will work out'.
I learnt a lot from the experience and I'm glad I did it. But gosh I wasted a lot of good juice and youthful exuberance on that.
Failure is not 'free'.
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.
Most communities have that though; they don't like others having success, they don't like talent/genius in others, they laugh at failure (both by large and small companies) etc. Really one of the best lessons in life (often learned at a higher age) is to give two shits about what anyone thinks about whatever you do.
Just building stuff (fail/success doesn't matter so much) is more than by far most will ever do; they are mostly jealous of people who get anything done at all.
It started as one single simple script and now has grown into a maintenance hell of a thing, but I still use it on a weekly basis :-)
Unfortunately atm I cannot even afford the time to redirect the github sponsoring income to charities[2], but by the end of the year, this might change.
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.
Just a laid-back bloke building stuff in his garage, without giving a shit what other people might think about it.
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…
But that's because you still cared about others. And maybe didn't read enough startup/entrepreneur books or know enough people who did that. Once you know what crap companies willingly release which go on to be successful, it will make you far less perfectionist.
I had the luck of having a few family members in computing in the 70s when I was born, so I heard early on about Allen debugging/fixing the basic interpreter he wrote on a PDP for a processor he didn't have access to at the time on the plane for one of the most important meetings of Microsoft at the time. The absolute and total garbage Oracle released for many years when they started. etc. And those are old stories, but this happens all the time; a lot of products that are launched by big or small companies are so full of bugs that I wonder sometimes if anyone bothered to try them.
I simply stopped caring about perfection as it drove me insane and no-one cares anyway. Even, in line with this article, even if I make something ONLY for myself, I rather just finish it and then change it over time then try to get it in a 'perfect state' from the start. It doesn't make me happy as perfection is not really something that's easy to define; especially in software, it is so incredibly hard to get to anything better than 'ok', that striving for perfection (Dijkstra like) will drive you completely bonkers and nothing ever gets released.
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 Most communities have that though; they don't like others having success, they don't like talent/genius in others, they laugh at failure (both by large and small companies) etc. Really one of the best lessons in life (often learned at a higher age) is to give two shits about what anyone thinks about whatever you do. Just building stuff (fail/success doesn't matter so much) is more than by f…