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Comment by thronemonkey | Hacker News Reader

This is a near perfect summary of my problems with the tech business (particular the startup scene) and why I wouldn't want to get into it. People are so focused on making things that I find to be totally trivial and banal. How many more note-taking apps, organizers, and social whatevers does the world really need?

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>People are so focused on making things that I find to be totally trivial and banal.

Then build something that isn't.

Right, there's so much rhetoric about being a producer and not a consumer, when (as you point out) the things being produced are mostly pretty underwhelming. As if it doesn't really matter too much what you're making as long as you're a maker and not one of those yucky consumer zombies.

Indeed. Ironic that "being a producer" is heralded so when the marginal cost of production of these goods really is around ~$0.00 in many/most/virtually all cases. I'm just say'n is all...

The point of being a producer is not that you have to work on the biggest world-changing idea from the get-go; the point is to get on the bandwagon of producing, practice makes perfect.

It's said that it takes 10000 hours of practice to become good at something; what's wrong with building another text app or music app while practicing? It's all experience, building up to something great in the future.

In one sense you are correct. But do we really need so many people doing what is essentially journeyman work, building trivial one-feature products with piles of VC funding that forces them to produce things that make money, rather than things that are good or do any any good? There are a lot of deserving open source projects that you can practice on, rather than stumbling around trying to figure out what you want to do while looking for an exit to justify your latest round of funding.

> what's wrong with building another text app or music app while practicing? It's all experience, building up to something great in the future.

I don't mind you practicing for 20,000 hours, but please do not publish online and do not spam the internet with "your text app or music app while [you were] practicing".

There may be a value in some early writings of Shakespeare or Tolstoy, but I cannot possibly imagine anyone willing to go through all the clutter that the brightest writers ever written, from the very first dot they've put on a blank piece of paper.

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