Programming is a way to Procrastinate | Hacker News Reader

Programming is a way to Procrastinate

blog.cubeofm.com

68 pointsmrphoebs30 comments

Apparently in the writer's world, people who make things are "lazy...mindless...procrastinators." On the other hand, people who sell things that have already been made are "thinking, and doing hard work in areas [they] barely understand. It's real work compared to programming."

Pure troll.

No, he's talking about programmers who want to sell software without spending time on marketing it to their potential customers. Unless you've got an incredible product you'll have to get off your ass at some point and actively try to sell it. That's where the procrastination part pops up and I've been guilty of this myself.

But if it's procrastination because I'm trying to avoid it (because I'm not good at it), isn't that the perfect opportunity to bring in the "marketing guy/gal" cofounder to do that work for me? Ideally, you would then only have to actively "sell" it to one person who can pass it on to the rest.

What's being called procrastination here, I'd prefer to call specialization. But I'm probably being naive about this.

Sure, as long as you get off your ass and find a good marketing person. And then you work as hard as you can to support them.

I think many people at this point probably go "yes, marketing person, problem solved" but don't put the time into getting a decent co-founder to help them.

How can you tell if your marketing guy is any good if you don't spend some time at it yourself? You know your own product better than anyone else. If you're passionate about the problem you're solving then start telling people who are experiencing that problem.

Dude, he speaks the truth. People do what they are most comfortable with and have a large blind-spot for things they ought to be doing but keep putting off. The tone of the article doesn't seem biased or inflammatory to me.

I believe the author is a programmer who makes his own software. So, he's making and selling his own work. Not a troll.

Yes, he is. He is the author of the "I made 20k in a month" post of some time ago. Just to put him in context.

The approach he advocates is basically to "shotgun" projects and make a little bit off each one:

http://blog.cubeofm.com/how-to-become-rich-even-if-nobody-is...

...which was widely criticized as advocating spam:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1112043

Just to put him in more context.

People who do business try to do the marketing without building a product; people who build software try to build the product without doing any marketing. His point is that neither type will get anywhere.

"Pure troll" was the signature? Because it is a controversial post, designed to inflame spirits, add little to the discussion and very close to and ad hominem.

I agree -- for software engineers, programming is a popular way to procrastinate. Refactoring doubly so :-)

Whereas, for somebody comfortable with selling and networking but uncomfortable making or improving products, the networking and selling would be a way to procrastinate.

> for somebody comfortable with selling and networking but uncomfortable making or improving products, the networking and selling would be a way to procrastinate.

No, no, you did the hard bit, coming up with an idea, and you have the connections and the sales know-how to make the business succeed. Now all you need is a cofounder who will come in and implement it in exchange for some sweat equity, say 1% of a business that will be worth at least one hundred million dollars.

@raganwald: you make me want to print out your comment and staple it to my wall.

Hello sir. I had this idea yesterday for a site like facebook but with classifieds like craig's list in it and I'm looking for an experienced C/C++ coder...

> Refactoring doubly so :-)

Oh, man, the truth hurts!

I would much rather refactor than go out and sell.

There is such a zen to refactoring. It doesn't require intense problem-solving thought, but it isn't mindless. More, hm... mindful. sigh

Refactoring is very similar to picking up house or cleaning out my closet to me. I love the feeling of throwing things away, of knowing everything fits properly. That's great for a Saturday morning. With refactoring, though, you're combining that feeling with the idea that you're "working on your business," and that is a crippling combination. You don't even realize you're procrastinating.

This article is fantastic. I just realized two days ago that programming isn't the challenge to me that it once was. Oh, sure, there are plenty of things I don't know how to do, and I'll spend the rest of my life improving at my craft. But I have a confidence that I can figure out how to do anything I need to do.

I don't have that confidence when it comes to running a business. And that's how I know it's time to make running a business my full-time focus, and only program when I must to reach my business goals. Not because running a business is easy, but because it's hard.

There can only be so many minimalist apps, some startups have to aim a little bit higher than the low hanging fruit where it isn't so much about good marketing and a clean intuitive layout. For these people I don't think a long time programming is procrastination but rather a necessity.

Also if you have money tucked away to survive in some cases it would be better to sit back, re factor, add/ improve features until you have something your really confident about spreading it around widely. There is a lot of talk about release early, but for smaller unknowns you may only get one chance to make a good initial impression.

You may only get one chance for a good first impression of this project, but you can also get first impressions on other projects. Release early is all about finding if you are making something people want.

EX: I really want an improved version of PowerPoint that let's me embed editable graphs without crashing and it would be nice if the interface was cleaner. Now if I had a lot of money I might try and build a competing version of PowerPoint but what I really want is a feature, now what's the minimum product? How about a PowerPoint add on that cleans up whatever the bug(s) that causes the problem in the first place? Or a website that fixes broken PowerPoint files? Ok what's the minimum amount of work to to start to get money from this idea?

I strongly disagree that you only get one chance for a first impression. Minimally, you get one chance at a first impression per customer.

None of you saw my site when it launched, because you were not among the 70 people who were subjected to that horror. (Those brave souls gave me many insights on how to make it better.) For the 60% of 5,000 people who visited yesterday who had never been to the site before, the past 3.5 years essentially didn't happen. To them, my site launched on Valentine's Day.

I also think people vastly, vastly overstate the degree to which you will develop a "reputation" or "brand" as being (whatever you are currently). Large companies pay Madison Avenue staggering sums of money to get people to remember them. They do it because it is inherently hard work. 99.99% of the time, a user having a negative experience with your site ends with the back button. 99.99% of the remainder, you get an email with, ahem, variable levels of politeness. Respond to it with grace and humility, and you'll avoid almost all long-term issues.

Very true, it depends on your product though. If your getting a lot of your business through things like adwords/search and occasional articles/ recommendations your exactly right. Although if your developing something big the first impression is going to mean a lot. Take something like Google Buzz (admittedly even bigger than the range I'm advocating it for), I think that kind of first impression, where the service is all over the tech media and being talked about in social media, the first impression is going to mean quiet a lot in terms of future adoption.

Another example, Age of Conan, great game idea, early execution was off and it set them on a path where they were never really going to get back to initial subscription numbers no matter how much effort they put into the game.

Yeah, games are quirky in that ongoing development on them is largely a lost cause (sole exception in the industry: Blizzard) and that they have a shelf-life measured in weeks. If I were head of a game studio my first action would be to fire myself because everything I know is wrong for them.

A very interesting article that points out that a start-up business requires more than just code. Once the code is done, you need marketing, support and sales. At that point, adding features is just procrastination - far too tempting for many hackers.

I think it is likely this is one reason why PG says you have to go fulltime, fully commit to your startup - once you run out of money you are forced to go to the market place and actually sell. Many people who are creating a startup in their free time can put this off forever.

Imagine how much better Segway would have done if they had gone to market earlier and discovered that few people actually wanted a slow, gyroscopic bike.

I thought Joel's point was a bit better way of putting this: sales acts as a multiplier on product quality (and vice versa). So if either factor is zero, your total revenue will be zero too. If you try to sell a crappy product, you won't get any bites, and if you have a great product but never try to sell it, nobody will know about it.

The author seems to be under the impression that programming is same as building a product. Building a decent product is much more time consuming and mentally exhausting especially if you are on your own (sure being on your own gives you a lot of flexibility in making decisions quickly). If you want to build a product that does good business, what you need is a decent team with at least one developer/product owner, one sales person/marketing person and one customer.

I actually should have been programming instead of playing video games. Am I doing double layers of procrastination?

Seriously something programming is very hard, like tracing down an elusive bug or getting the performance to go higher. These things are what make or break a product. Doing the programming is necessary.

This reminds me of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1123175

Not sure if it's laziness, but a lack of courage, confidence, trust and... dare I say it... faith.

The unknown is scary.

Writing blog posts is an even easier way to procrastinate than programming.

Currently, I'm replying to a comment about a blog post, so I can avoid writing Matlab code. I must be the ultimate procrastinator.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com