Ask YC: What is the hardest part of creating a web app? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: What is the hardest part of creating a web app?

4 pointsdhotson12 comments

I just thought I would ask what you guys consider to be the most difficult part of creating a product or web app?

I find the technical stuff is usually the easy part.

HTTP server plus CGI was designed to be a gateway to anything. HTML browser with Javascript, plugins and capability to perform HTTP GET, POST methods was designed to be easy to be programmed.

So the hard part are

1. The right UI that makes the task easy.

2. The accumulation of data and/or consturction of the system behind the HTTP server that does the task. And in case you have millions simultaneous users, you will have a lot of fun to find efficient ways to perform the task. (Efficiency in both computing resources consumptions and economical cost)

3. Building the system described in 1 and 2 fast enough to have feedback from users frequently and iterate it fast so they will always expecting something good/useful/cool shows up every now and then.

4. Good quality of service. Whether there is only one user or billions of users in the world use the system. The system shouldn't make them frustrated in complete the task. The system shouldn't waste their time in life by waiting a broken page.

Inertia. Getting started is the first fail point as too many worry about too much and hence never start.

Make a start, and just keep iterating. Each time you will find the "hardest part" changes.

Cross Browser compatibility

Making something (new) that people want.

launching it (ties in with the selling and/or marketing part)

not the hardest. but making the UI good.

I'm not sure if you mean the experience or functionality when you say "making the UI good".

I think it would be the user experience / user design

then maybe cross browser implementation.

details

Truly. It's often surprising that the features that seem so simple in theory can be really complex when brought into reality. Making something that is really good can feel like death by a thousand cuts sometimes.

It's easy to fool yourself into thinking something will be a lot easier than it will be too. This site is a good example. I'm sure I could make a basic functional clone in a few hours, but there'd be dozens of (important) details I'd miss. And that's just copying something. Creating something new means you have to figure out all those details and there's really no shortcut. The best you can do is to keep things as absolutely minimal as possible.

The first 90% of the work takes 90% of the time. The remaining 10% takes the other 90% of the time.

From experience, the last 1% takes around 50% of the time.

Check your numbers.

Why?

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