Getting Unstuck | Hacker News Reader

Getting Unstuck

iamjonas.me

76 pointsfeross15 comments

I've been through both of those, and they're a pleasure compared to the third way of being stuck. Not knowing who the fuck will ever want to use the product you spent years building every aspect of.

I'm waiting for some smart ass writer to do a know-it-all piece about that.

No article required but this smart ass suggests the best way to deal with that is work for someone else’s stupid idea until the money stops and let them worry about it.

Fools and their money are soon parted.

I'll humor you and think of some examples. For fun and humor :)

If you look at history, I think you're in good company.

I think the following people fit this case:

* Vincent van Gogh (no one used his paintings)

* Ted Nelson (no one used his version of hypertext)

* Douglas Engelbard (really ironic when you think about it, made all kinds of multimedia prototypes and it took 50 years and his name is nowhere to be found)

* Ignaz Semmelweis (really really unfortunate, relied on very primitive correlational analyses on childbed fever, got the treatment right -- hand washing -- yet no one believed him while he was alive)

People that didn't make the cut:

* Alan Turing (people did use his Enigma, I thought about him for a second because of how the British government treated him)

* Stanislav Petrov (many people "used" his "product" without anyone knowing, I considered him because still too few people know about this hero)

Ahh. yeah I had to google Petrov, but I've read his story before. And why don't I know his name? Without that guy, none of us would be alive.

So what you're saying is that lots of people are underappreciated in their time. That's cool. I just want someone to buy me a beer once in awhile.

Post a Ripple or Stellar address, and I'll buy you one ;-)

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ROFLMAO! Let us all know how many beers you get outta that, yo! I'm genuinely curious. ;)

Can we actually go back to talking about why it sucks to spend years making some product awesome, that no one actually wants to use? You learn a great deal about interfaces, UX. A/B. You prepare for massive scalability.

Long pause.

If it was a decent idea, it's stolen by someone else who has more resources. Otherwise, it dies. Either way, no one even knows you tried. (Yeah yeah, that's back to Mr. Petrov. Maybe I should spend a year making a statue of him).

Just don't spend years making something before you know someone wants it?

Over-optimizing for future scaling is also bad, YAGNI, etc...

Pivots are a thing, if the product ain't working can you tweak it/change it to be something else?

It's just not very fullfiling to become an icon after you die, or after another company steals your idea or whatever.

We are social beings, we want some amount of payoff weather in be cultural, social or monetary capital.

Lots of brilliant people lived horrible lives, lots of extremely mediocre but well connected people lived happily making bank prototypes made in the shadows - and that's just how it is - but i get the gist of what OP is saying.

Off course the perspective that you built something "for the Zen of it" is important, but i increasingly think it's a perspective pushed mostly to benefit the beneficiaries at the absolute top - no one want's to do stuff "for free" though the pay may be of personal value, altruistic etc.

> Alan Turing (people did use his Enigma

Enigma is the German cipher device he was instrumental in cracking. It was not his machine.

Alan Turing did not make the Enigma. He helped crack it.

This is why early validation is pushed so hard in the lean startup space; to be sure you have a market before significant code is written.

Here is something that may be what you want: http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

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