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My favorite just ship it story is the software to control the first SpaceX droneship landing attempt. The developers told Elon that there'd be no way the code could be ready in two weeks. He asked if they could give a 50% shot, they said yes so they shipped the code:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6T8mn6LD2E

Of course they did learn a ton.

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> Of course they did learn a ton.

Don't ship: rocket is lost, nothing is learned.

Ship: rocket is still lost, but a lot is learned.

This holds true for many startups. If you ship, you learn. You may think you know what your customer wants, but until you get it in the hands of users you won't know what features really matter.

Hm, if the statements in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ are correct that failure was because they ran out of hydraulic fluid, not software (but maybe/probably that's not the complete story)

The software likely caused an overuse of the hydraulics.

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