Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit) | Hacker News Reader

Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)

aaronsw.com

48 pointsabstractbill102 comments

"There is something to this, of course. But I have a contrary proposal: users love perfectionism."

Wrong. I would love to see more new features on reddit rather than waiting for them to re-write everything. The search function is still somewhat broken!

There is even competition of sorts: http://redditmedia.com/ That site displays thumbnails for stories...why doesn't reddit.com have an extra section or option/setting for that? So many good things could be done if not for this perfectionism bullshit.

Another good story: 37signals took a long time fixing Backpack and finally released a new version. Too late, I had already switched to Simple GTD. I don't get why they didn't incrementally improve things...I bet they've lost many more users due to their slowness.

Perfectionism is paralyzing.

Almost,

Success is paralyzing.

"Once a product gets past the stage where it has glaring flaws, you start to get used to it, and gradually whatever features it happens to have become its identity." -- Hardest Lessons #2

Reddit certainly fell into that one big time. Digg has done a much better job at maintaining a fast development pace.

A previous company I worked for split in two, one half took on an online training site project and my half built an online website development system. The half that did the training site all hated me because I code by the seat of my pants, sometimes put out work that needed a tweak or two and I wasn't there because I was just up for 24 hours writing it. They took 6 months designing and mapping out there project, they took another 6 months to build it and by the time they were done they had 3 months of money left to make it successful and thus went out of business while my side is still going strong 6 years later. I don't exactly advocate treating users like beta testers, but if you can`t find any more errors put it out, fix anything you didn't find that gets reported by the users, then move on.

Personally I used to be like this. I would never launch anything, because nothing I did was ever good enough for me. However, recently I learned my lesson. I launched hackrtrackr with only one feature, and without and going back and rethinking what I had done. The result an insanely simple website that has taken off very well. Also by launching with only one feature and minimal code it allowed me to quickly add the features I received requests for, because I didn't have to wade through a bunch of lines.

> Personally I used to be like this. I would never launch anything, because nothing I did was ever good enough for me.

Sounds like practice coding to me, I am sure the experience you gained helped you write what you decided was worthy of releasing.

http://beta.jottit.com/

Looks a lot like infogami, just more broken :-)

or like backpack, but with the default permissions reversed (he even stole some copy from backpack)

Yeah, I don't get why he would want to try with this again. Why doesn't he focus on web.py and promoting it? That would be much more fulfilling than creating a wiki/note-jotting site.

Ohh but how your perception will change when you see his site achieve a state of perfection:)

Hah, anyway I myself do enjoy webpy and wouldn't mind giving something back to it, but if I were him I'd probably rather do a startup.

"... Why doesn't he focus on web.py and promoting it? ..."

The focus is there. I've been lurking the web.py mail list for a long time (Jan 19, 2006 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/88347878/ ) and there has been a steady progression of code since then. So in my view it is being promoted, worked on and improved.

   "The programmers were in the corner doing what they were told. 
    That's one reason they were so easy to outsource. If a programmer 
    never really talks to the customer, never thinks, just solves little 
    puzzles, well that's a perfect candidate for something to offshore." 
    ~ Founders at Work, Ch24, Philip Greenspun, P325, Livingston, 2007.

But instead of just promoting just another bit of technology, maybe it's better to do something with it. A lot of technology is commodity that can be replicated by some programmer in the corner. Build useful things with it, creating value is a lot harder to commoditise.

I don't think there is much point in telling him what would be more fulfilling to him.

Some interesting and useful things have to be done as companies rather than open-source projects.

What are those, in the software world?

I can only think of projects that involve a lot of drudge work that nobody wants to do unless they're paid to. I suppose this includes most services. What else has to be done by a company?

Google probably has to, for example.

Yes, Google is a service. But then again, Debian repositories are a service, as is Wikipedia, as is Usenet (although you said 'open source', I'm assuming your argument extends to donated effort in general). So there must be some other difficulty to Google.

There are high stakes, business wise, in web search. But then again, that was just as true for operating systems and web browsers. So cross that one too.

Google is resource intensive. Open source is good at providing manpower, but not so good at sustaining huge running costs of other type. But then again, Google started quite small, and I'd guess Wikipedia, Usenet or Debian need more resources than many small companies. So, is it only a matter of size? In any event, this doesn't apply to Aaron's new startup.

Anything else?

Just came to mind: an area where open source doesn't even try to go, AFAIK, is services that require you to entrust them with sensitive personal data. For example, I don't think there's any volunteer run service that asks you for your credit card info, or that hosts your personal email.

I don't think it's only (or mainly) a matter of accountability. In general, volunteer services are given for the benefit of a community. Services targeted to individuals (except casual social interactions like answering questions) don't attract much volunteer effort, and are generally provided by for-profit companies.

Anything that creates obligations essentially has to be done as a company. Open-source programmers typically tend to be leery of taking on projects where they have to do something, with good reason. Also, contracts generally aren't enforceable if there is no money (or other "consideration") changing hands. Anything where you want to be sure that something gets done in the future basically needs to go through the real economy.

The examples cited so far are basically special cases of this. Google needs to be able to enter into contracts for hosting, bandwidth, power, uptime, etc, so it needs to be a real corporation. When you entrust sensitive personal data, you want an ongoing obligation to keep that data secure, which you can't get with open-source. Additional examples might be corporate support contracts, support for certain platforms, and any service dealing with payment or finances.

Basically, open-source is good for sharing what people have done, while corporations are good for determining what people will do.

Very lucid, thanks.

Any software project, no matter how cool it seems, is at least 50% drudge work. I'd be willing to argue that the inverse-pseudo-pareto-principle applies... 20% of any non-trivial software project is fun, and the other 80% is drudge work.

Even certain open source projects require paid staff. The only reason FireFox exists is because the Mozilla foundation can pay programmers to work on the ugly parts.

OK, so that would prove that open source can get drudge work done, right? Or do you think 80% of open source work is sponsored by companies? For all I know, that might be the case, but are sponsored efforts any less open source?

The sponsored efforts are indeed open source. However, the only reason the drudge work got done was because someone was paid to do it. People don't like doing crappy stuff if they aren't getting paid.

I can think of other reasons why people would do boring stuff. This is by no means an orthogonal breakdown!

- Militance: They believe in a cause and do some sacrifices to further it. Like translating software and docs into an obscure language. This can be done by zealots of the software, of the language, or both.

- Self-image (somewhat related to the above): After having completed the sexy parts, you care about the appearance of your project as a whole, so you fill in the boring parts.

- Pleasing users (somewhat related to the above): You get hooked in a virtuous feedback cycle with your users. Some things that would be boring in themselves get done in anticipation of the positive feedback.

- Competitiveness: a mix of the two above. You want to be the best at what you do, and the boring stuff offers opportunities to differentiate.

- Scratch a personal itch: I think many Linux device drivers get done because of this. Also most of the external bug reporting (and most of the business sponsorship.)

- The long tail of vocation: what is boring to most is probably someone's joy.

- Retribution: You love an open source product as an user, so you give back.

- Social acceptance: You want to become part of the community of contributors. You aren't qualified to do the hard stuff yet.

In MMOG's, lots of people volunteer for Game Masters, which is an euphemism for unpaid customer service. They do very boring, repetitive work for the benefit of a for-profit company that gives them absolutely nothing in return (indeed, it's legally dangerous to give them anything in return).

So don't underestimate people's ability to do drudge work for free.

With regards to people working as Game Masters in MMOG's, I think it's mostly done for the feeling of godlike power.

In the game I worked in, most had no power whatsoever in the game. The only power some of them had was moderator role in the help chat channels, and the ability to teleport their GM characters (not their playing ones) to check out problems. They were watched closely for abuse, so you can hardly call that power at all.

You can say they were motivated by a feeling of notoriety. In my area we have problems with people that would sneak and set woods on fire only so they can feel important helping to extinguish the fire. They get no tangible benefit from it, not even power, and they risk shame and jail if they get caught. Feeling relevant is a strong motivation for some people.

And some interesting and useful things have to be done as open source projects.

Like programming languages:-)

http://beta.jottit.com/8dw3p/

http://HowDoesJottitFormattingWork.jottit.com (same site in theory...doesn't seem to be working, though.)

Anybody know of where you can get more instructions on how to use it?

Handy for throwing together a random anonymous blog, I guess. Ad-supported, I assume?

Right, I'm sorry, I deleted your site. Why the hell could I delete your site?

edit: It's still there in history to be reverted.

Mmm, I didn't know the history button was there, and it only looks like it saves so many revisions. No biggie tho, I rebuilt it. Not sure why you can edit anybody's site. Could be fun in some ways I guess. Mental note for future, tho: Keep a copy in a .txt file...

And I just noticed...it didn't give a username for your edit. Can it be edited by literally -anyone-, member or not?

--Nevermind. You can set that up in the setting. The defaults are somewhat curious.

So, basically, a pastebin without syntax highlighting?

This beta is amusing - while he talk about perfectionism, he is releasing a beta with severe XSS issues.

For whatever reason I can't edit my comment above (is there a time limit?), but if anybody changes the above linked site so a big pic covers the 'edit' and 'history' buttons, or it redirects to another site, or whatever, you can get to the edit and history by going to http://beta.jottit.com/8dw3p/?m=edit or http://beta.jottit.com/8dw3p/?m=history.

You can only edit or delete comments for one hour after you post.

Infogami reloaded. It's pretty cool though. It's horribly broken in IE. It would be cool to create more complex page hierarchies.

http://beta.jottit.com/62yhc/

FWIW, this wasn't an actual beta. I'd mapped *.jottit.com to the test server so we could test picking particular domains and forgot to password-protect it.

thanks Aaron, don't let the naysayers get you down, news.yc really loves you.

If aaron wants to indulge let him please go ahed. But this post is so insincere when it gives the bit about users loving perfectionism that it makes me dizzy. Its either insincere or is delusional.I don't want to have anything to do with either.

PG wants to indulge with arc, he went ahed. But I don't remember him giving some insincere explanation.

I am now a strong believer in motherfucker's theory of insincerity http://atomicwang.org/motherfucker/Index/E06C66BF-E7D5-48FF-... (sorry, but that what he calls himself)

That post about sincerity is interesting but exactly, completely wrong. He's completely reversed the entire cause effect relationship. I'll write a blog post as to why.

quick! to the INTERNET, in order to correct the misconceptions of others!

it never stops being tempting.

That's kind of a silly way to look at discourse. All discourse is basically someone trying to correct the misconceptions of others.

So is there anything besides misconception? Is there One True Conception, which defeats all others in internet debate?

Internet debate gets a bad rep, but it's intrinsically no worse than any other written debate (which in and of itself is certainly the highest form of discourse man has ever invented). Sincere internet debate is perhaps 50% of what makes the medium useful (the other 50% being, of course, videos of kittens). Insincere internet debate is unfortunately 99% of the overall market and often clouds that fact. So if anything, there's your unified theory of sincerity.

As for one true conception, I imagine it exists on many topics, though getting at it is rather tricky. I've certainly started to argue with people before only to find out, as I put it in writing, that I agreed with them, sometimes even for reasons they'd missed. So if the truth is so convoluted that you can never really know it, perhaps it functionally does not exist.

I now feel my counter argument to the sincerity thing is overhyped though. I don't have enough time to make it live up. Please don't read, you'll only be let down.

There's nothing wrong with correcting misconceptions. The most interesting scientific discoveries are usually of that form. And there is nothing special about the Internet; it's just a medium, and rapidly becoming the default one.

Watching this get abandoned will be enormously humorous.

Why? Perfectionists do that all the time.

I notice a lot of animosity towards PG in Aaron's writings...

Aaron did know PG personally; maybe he's right. Tell you what, anybody in a YC-funded startup who, like Aaron, tires of weekly+ email exchanges with this humorless nudzh, just redirect him to me. PG can pester me about my project, and you can work undisturbed. Sound good? I'd be happy to do you that favor.

A lot of people have a strong dislike of Aaron. I've certainly had unpleasant experiences.

Such as?

I expect Matt will have more personal bad experiences, but the most well-publicized one goes approximately as follows:

- Aaron applies to YC, starts Infogami with a co-founder who drops out (presumably because of Aaron's special interpersonal sparkles).

- Aaron launches Infogami, with a promise of a new feature every day.

- Aaron complains for a long time about how he doesn't have a co-founder, and then merges with Reddit.

- Aaron abandons Infogami (pissing off all its users, including me), and then proceeds not to do anything at Reddit, to the chagrin of the Reddits, who just effectively gave him a bunch of their stock. Aaron nevertheless has time for nauseatingly many melodramatic blog entries. - Reddit gets bought, and Aaron gets an equal share of the spoils.

- Aaron cries in the bathroom (literally), and then quits Wired, the acquiring company, by just not showing up to work. (And posts a suicidal blog entry, and proceeds to delete it.)

- Aaron does an interview in which he claims to have been part of Reddit from the beginning, pissing absolutely everyone off.

I think thats a great reason for the Reddit guys to be pissed off at him - I just didn't realize anyone on this forum has had personal interactions with him.

Agreed, so what if his startup fails and he doesn't release a feature per day as he promised? That's what startups (usually) do. They fail. Shouldn't hold that against him personally.

As far as the reddit guys go, there's a reason you're not supposed to do a startup with your closest friends. Aren't you supposed to hate your partner to some degree by the end? I know I did... But I understand that to be normal so I just relax and don't let that anger bother me outside of work.

What I find amusing is that, barring personal interactions, I put Matt and Aaron in the same category - they both have annoying and arrogant internet personas. The only difference is that I believe Aaron is a very talented programmer. The only thing I believe about Matt is that he is an above average poker player. On a personal level, both of them are irrelevant to me.

Good for them. If you're pissing people off, you're probably doing something right.

The funny part is, for most people here, Aaron and Matt aren't reading your blog -- but you're reading theirs! This is like a Denial-Of-Service attack against their competition by inducing them to waste time they could be spending on their own startup instead reading about someone else's.

Id software was a master at this. Everyone was so busy playing Quake, Quake II, etc. that they weren't working on their own games. Did you know actual celebrities are horrible at recognizing other celebrities? They are too busy making movies to read celebrity gossip magazines.

Speaking of, I probably should get back to work!

startup/nerd drama! more, more, more! this is better than Perez Hilton!

Wait until you hear who the Reddit mascot has been sleeping with!

Mine wasn't that bad, but it did involve me being told I had an apartment in Cambridge locked up, only to find less than two weeks before Y C began that I didn't.

Sorry, but how does that involve me?

You know, if that were true, I'd hate myself even more than I do already!

Most of what I said was inferred from the Reddit discussion resulting from the aforementioned interview, and most of the content in that discussion came from people who were actually involved. So, maybe I inferred wrongly; which things weren't true?

I only notice disagreement, but maybe I missed something.

Funny, since Aaron had exactly the opposite strategy when he launched Infogami, blogging about launching a new feature everyday and taking a very incremental approach. I don't think that lasted very long though. Everyone is free to change their mind, of course...

It is good that he chose an extreme though. Publicity tends to like extremes, regardless of which extreme it is.

Certain personalities tend to like extremes in that way as well.

The problem w/ perfectionism is that it's only perfect in the eyes of one person...

this statement is so true

That open library project didn't last too long...

didn't you see that other post? he finished it!

Yes, I'm coining a new term - "pefectionism." Don't know what it means, I'll let the audience decide.

I disagree... users love seeing new features. If they don't work so well, they don't care. Most likely they'll enjoy them and feel privileged they are getting to use them before they are really ready. They'll see the potential. They'll start imagining what it'll be like once it's finished. If it's a cool, innovative feature they haven't seen before, they'll see it as proof you're a cool place to be. Even if half of it doesn't work.

Get features out often. Of course make sure they don't break anything else, or reduce the users experience, but users love to see a site evolving and changing with them on board.

Like Artix, Chain would have failed in its current form no matter how smooth it was polished. It was very important that we failed fast so that we could focus on morphing it into something that works. You lose that with perfectionism.

So you'd better be a Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs releases with less than perfection all the time. If you need evidence, look no further than giving AT&T an exclusive with the iPhone.

The key is accepting that people prefer products to promises, and just going ahead with something that's good enough without it being perfect.

Being a perfectionist doesn't mean you make perfect things. However, perfectionism requires perfect taste for success.

It feels like there are two forms of design: "release early and release often" and "release it perfectly". Very few people have the taste necessary to find success in the latter.

Good point - "release early, release often" is also a quest to perfectionism, but is a public quest. You have your users determine what is perfect, what directions to go in.

Holding something to yourself until it is "perfect" is a solo quest. You may spend too much time on the wrong things and no time on the right things. But you also won't release something that is completely broken.

"You may spend too much time on the wrong things and no time on the right things."

Aha, now we know what to call that solo quest for perfection: premature optimization.

Don't you dare say Chain is failing. I'm still using the site!

Just make it look a tiny bit nicer, get a few mentions on various blogs and you'll be fine. A PayPal donate link may help too?

Aw, thanks mouse! I love creating something that at least one person likes.

We're just refocusing the site. I'll toss you an email with the outline of the redesign so you can approve or disapprove it.

Edit: Email away

What is Chain?

http://www.cha1n.com

So it's something like a community incubator? Interesting. Not something I'd use, but interesting.

Hehe, no, and that's why it's being redesigned. The focus isn't immediately clear.

It's currently a productivity site. You'll say "I'm going to run every day". When you've done it you check back to the site and make a post about it and attach a photo. Your post is shared with everyone else doing the same thing as you, and you can upvote posts.

> So you'd better be a Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs is a huge perfectionist. However he will make you work 70+ hours a week to achieve his perfection and he will ride you every step of the way to get the best out of you. http://www.folklore.org

I think you have set a new record for deciding defeat the fastest:)

Depends what you mean by defeat. It seems like one is only defeated when they stop trying new things, which is never going to be the case for us. But one can simply fail by making something only 2 people want.

What's the difference between "adding a feature" and "improving the site"?

I always took them to be the same thing. In that sense, you're either adding a feature or you're stagnating. (Or, I suppose, going backwards.)

"Getting Real" has the answer to that: https://gettingreal.37signals.com/

In short, having fewer features is often the best feature.

..unless it isn't.

(points to all the billion dollar networking sites on the news)

Wow this discussion has invoked a lot of participation, unfortunately this is useless discussion. Don't you guys have to hack?

What ... and miss the two minute hate?

people seem to confuse adding features to additions in the interface. Most of the times users are either subconsciously frustrated by a problem or that there isn't a solution for it yet (i.e. why someone else hasn't solved it yet).

perfection??? I think most software sucks so much that it doesn't do anything useful. It would be better to try and get your product to do just one thing that is useful for one person.

Aiming for perfection is just an excuse for not building something useful.

I played around a little bit on beta.jottit.com. In editing mode, I like the live rendering alongside the marked up text. I haven't seen that before.

http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/windows/2007/02/07/jottit ?

No, that's Jott.com. Not sure why the author refers to it as "JottIt".

Thanks for the clarification.

hmm... how about a compromise: release early, release often, keep things as simple as possible, but get those details perfect.

What's Jottit going to be, then?

Apart from a failed startup?

looks like so 1999. come on this is 2007. and the name is like a hit train got over it ...g(j)ot it?

I have reservations about that name.

No, it's fine. The site's going to let you list famous people who you want to sign various body parts. It'll make for an interesting tag cloud.

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