http://www.google.com/notebook/public/14636089903511277449/BDQiPSgoQ98yW0vQh
Also python: long tail is a good read, drags out a bit though. Possibly more my attention span at fault there.
1. Think big: Since I was developing a micro ISV, I had never really considered scaling the business to millions of customers (aka users). "Hackers and Painters" entered my life just a few weeks before I was about to launch my product; and I realized I had to develop something that can scale. I took a leap of faith and decided to instead pursue web startups; the opportunities for growth were many times in magnitude.
2. There are others like me: Toronto, Canada is not exactly a Silicon Valley. So uptil then, I didn't know there were so many other young entrepreneurs pursuing the same goals as me. Eventhough I wasn't acquainted with other hackers, I could at least gain a sense of security that I am not alone.
3. The Art of the Start: The single most valuable lesson I learned from Paul's book was the governing dynamics of web startups. Before reading it, there was not much inspiration or reason to think big because even if I did venture into online startups, I wouldn't know what to do.
While I have read some excellent books, I can credit Paul's work for watering the first seeds.
- JOS software reading list [0]
- JOS management reading list [1]
There are gaps in these lists but pretty much cover the best for both programmers & business - types. But the lists needs updating as I note pg's 'Painters & Hackers' is not listed nor is Cal Hendersons 'Building Scalable Websites' [3].
Reference
[0] Joel On Software 'Book Review, reading list'
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html
[1] Joel On Software, 'Management reading list'
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum.html
[3] Cal Henderson, 'Building Scalable Web Sites, 978-0596102357':
http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-Applications/dp/0596102356
I'm going to have to check out Cal Hendersons book sometime but first I have to make a good site then I can worry about scaling it.
[0] Carson Workshops, 'The Future of Web Apps, carsonworkshops.com/summit, Cal Henderson'
http://media.libsyn.com/media/carsonsystems/Cal_Henderson.mp3
[1] Carson Workshops, 'Building Enterprise Web Apps on a Budget How We Built Flickr, ~ 10Mb, 10 min.'
http://odeo.com/audio/1207043/view
[2] O'Reilly, 'O'Reilly, Building Scalable Web Sites, Cal Henderson. Chapter 5: Data Integrity and Security, ~ 5Mb'.
Then you can do with it, what you like! This is the bane of my existence and I want to own this problem!
1. Version control
2. Issue tracking
3. One-click deploy
4. Internationalization
5. Security
before you start building your application, then you build and release it, then (and only then) start thinking about:
6. Email
7. Web services
8. Scalability
9. Statistics & monitoring
10. APIs
This mostly squares with my experiences (both with my own startup - currently on step 3, with 4, 5 and a launch-ready app already done - and working for others). The only changes I'd make are:
1. Move statistics and monitoring up the priority list, before launch. You want that data available to drive feature implementation.
2. I'm of two minds on internationalization. I think that most apps can wait until they're popular before they need to internationalize. However, i18n is really difficult to do later, after you've already built an app. I watched LiveJournal go through the process, and it wasn't pretty. So even though you don't need it, you may want to do it upfront because it'll be much harder later.