4 ms·

Your App Has One Feature

49 points by liquidise 10y ago

readhn 10y ago
Focus on customer development and not product development. Product development fails to address customer needs.
dworin 10y ago
As a user more than an engineer, most of the apps I use have 'one feature,' but the one feature that's important to me is different than the one feature that's important to other people. My 'one feature' may also be a unique combination of smaller features that, when brought together, solve one very important problem for me, and some different combination of smaller features in the same tool will solve a different problem for someone else.
- khedoros 10y ago
  Agreed. When I seek out a new program, I usually have some specific goal that my current software doesn't cover, which usually means that it's something fairly "out there", and not even necessarily a core feature of whichever software I find. Still, a program needs a guiding light to its design. It has at least one purpose, and that purpose should be the central focus of its design. That doesn't mean there can't be ancillary features, of course.
hoodoof 10y ago
x
- abstractbeliefs 10y ago
  I actually think it does have one feature: the ability to edit text. For all the other things (syntax highlighting, VCS integration, debugger, test framework, compiler shortcuts), you can take away two or three of them and still have a worthwhile program. But if the text editing part is non-existent or painful to use (think only emacs bindings to a vim user, and vice versa)? It's game over.
rezashirazian 10y ago
This reminds me of this article by Joel Spolsky on Excel: Over the next two weeks we visited dozens of Excel customers, and did not see anyone using Excel to actually perform what you would call “calculations.” Almost all of them were using Excel because it was a convenient way to create a table. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/01/06.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/01/06.html
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Huh? Okay, maybe a lot of people do use it for formatting tables. But what do people who do tabular calculations use? 98% of the time, Excel.
kazinator 10y ago
> What is the one thing that, when removed from your product, makes it fall apart? A big block comment in common.h containing the Hail Mary intercession prayer.

49 points by liquidise 10y ago

Focus on customer development and not product development. Product development fails to address customer needs.

As a user more than an engineer, most of the apps I use have 'one feature,' but the one feature that's important to me is different than the one feature that's important to other people. My 'one feature' may also be a unique combination of smaller features that, when brought together, solve one very important problem for me, and some different combination of smaller features in the same tool will solve a different problem for someone else.

khedoros 10y ago
Agreed. When I seek out a new program, I usually have some specific goal that my current software doesn't cover, which usually means that it's something fairly "out there", and not even necessarily a core feature of whichever software I find. Still, a program needs a guiding light to its design. It has at least one purpose, and that purpose should be the central focus of its design. That doesn't mean there can't be ancillary features, of course.

hoodoof 10y ago

abstractbeliefs 10y ago
I actually think it does have one feature: the ability to edit text. For all the other things (syntax highlighting, VCS integration, debugger, test framework, compiler shortcuts), you can take away two or three of them and still have a worthwhile program. But if the text editing part is non-existent or painful to use (think only emacs bindings to a vim user, and vice versa)? It's game over.

rezashirazian 10y ago

This reminds me of this article by Joel Spolsky on Excel: Over the next two weeks we visited dozens of Excel customers, and did not see anyone using Excel to actually perform what you would call “calculations.” Almost all of them were using Excel because it was a convenient way to create a table. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/01/06.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/01/06.html

paulddraper 10y ago
Huh? Okay, maybe a lot of people do use it for formatting tables. But what do people who do tabular calculations use? 98% of the time, Excel.

kazinator 10y ago

> What is the one thing that, when removed from your product, makes it fall apart? A big block comment in common.h containing the Hail Mary intercession prayer.