4 ms·

Is using "boring" tech odd for startups? Choosing and using tech is only one of the things a startup does. I would guess it's more important to do something od

Is using "boring" tech odd for startups? Choosing and using tech is only one of the things a startup does. I would guess it's more important to do something odd for everything else than it is to do something "odd" tech-wise.

hga 10y ago
Perhaps that's an "it depends", and "odd" tech can enable you to do something "odd" that your competitors can't do. When I was skimming the cited article for the quote I plucked out of it, I came across this bit: What were the results of this experiment [in using Lisp, which we knew, but didn't know anything else, like about business]? Somewhat surprisingly, it worked. We eventually had many competitors, on the order of twenty to thirty of them, but none of their software could compete with ours. We had a wysiwyg online store builder that ran on the server and yet felt like a desktop application. Our competitors had cgi scripts. And we were always far ahead of them in features. Sometimes, in desperation, competitors would try to introduce features that we didn't have. But with Lisp our development cycle was so fast that we could sometimes duplicate a new feature within a day or two of a competitor announcing it in a press release. By the time journalists covering the press release got round to calling us, we would have the new feature too. While currently popular scripting languages can also give you fairly rapid new feature development times, their decision to use a language and ecosystem that allowed for lightening fast development (plus, let's admit, very smart programmers) allowed them to do something that every else was doing, web storefronts, but in an "odd" manner, with an OODA loop their competitors couldn't dream of touching (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop).

4 ms·

Is using "boring" tech odd for startups? Choosing and using tech is only one of the things a startup does. I would guess it's more important to do something od

by freddref 10y ago

hga 10y ago
Perhaps that's an "it depends", and "odd" tech can enable you to do something "odd" that your competitors can't do. When I was skimming the cited article for the quote I plucked out of it, I came across this bit: What were the results of this experiment [in using Lisp, which we knew, but didn't know anything else, like about business]? Somewhat surprisingly, it worked. We eventually had many competitors, on the order of twenty to thirty of them, but none of their software could compete with ours. We had a wysiwyg online store builder that ran on the server and yet felt like a desktop application. Our competitors had cgi scripts. And we were always far ahead of them in features. Sometimes, in desperation, competitors would try to introduce features that we didn't have. But with Lisp our development cycle was so fast that we could sometimes duplicate a new feature within a day or two of a competitor announcing it in a press release. By the time journalists covering the press release got round to calling us, we would have the new feature too. While currently popular scripting languages can also give you fairly rapid new feature development times, their decision to use a language and ecosystem that allowed for lightening fast development (plus, let's admit, very smart programmers) allowed them to do something that every else was doing, web storefronts, but in an "odd" manner, with an OODA loop their competitors couldn't dream of touching (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop).