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My favorite line: > In my defense, heavy write loads seemed like the last thing Pinboard would ever face. It was my experience that people approached an online

by gsylvie 10y ago

My favorite line: > In my defense, heavy write loads seemed like the last thing Pinboard would ever face. It was my experience that people approached an online purchase of six dollars with the same deliberation and thoughtfulness they might bring to bear when buying a new car.

pjc50 10y ago
This is sadly true and a kind of "bikeshedding". It's why virtually all mobile games transitioned from paid-upfront to the current model of dangling progress in front of the user and offering to pay to relieve the artificial obstacle. (My favourite line is "This is especially true in the world of Rails and other frameworks, where there is a tendency to treat one's app like a high-level character in a role-playing game, equipping it with epic gems, sinatras, capistranos, and other mithril armor into a mighty "application stack"". )
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  > "This is especially true in the world of Rails and other frameworks, where there is a tendency to treat one's app like a high-level character in a role-playing game, equipping it with epic gems, sinatras, capistranos, and other mithril armor into a mighty "application stack"". The whole reason that ecosystem of gems exists is specifically to alleviate the problem of servicing your app in extreme fear. If you can actually use Capistrano effectively, deployment becomes a solved problem. Mithril armor is actually a great way of putting it.
- dilap 10y ago
  > It's why virtually all mobile games transitioned from paid-upfront to the current model of dangling progress in front of the user and offering to pay to relieve the artificial obstacle. Yes, that, but also because people will pay a lot more for IAP, over and over again. (Total amounts paid for super-engaged users will run to 10s of thousands of $, far beyond what you can even charge for a single app.) (And on the flip side, the developer has to continue to improve and maintain the game to keep the $ coming.) Much of the time, in my experience, when you pay to download an unknown app, it'll end up being poorly implemented in some way, and never made better. It's like paying $2 for a cup of coffee, but 95% of the time, the coffee turns out to be dirty water.
  - DougN7 10y ago
    Exactly. I'd pay to try many more apps if I could refund the crap. The best would be a 1 hour free trial. If I don't uninstall after one hour, bill me. If I do uninstall, don't. Apps could cost 10x what they do now if that was possible because I'd see the value, rather than gambling like today.
gsylvie 10y ago
Interesting how the $6 helped him survive the initial onslaught of new customers, since it would have probably been 10x more writes without this $6 throttle in place. One of his tweets from that same day contains my other favourite line: > there are worse things than being DDOS'ed by people trying to give you money (Source: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/12/the-small-exodus-from-delicious-to-pinboard.html http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/12/the-small-exodus-from-... )

by gsylvie 10y ago

pjc50 10y ago

This is sadly true and a kind of "bikeshedding". It's why virtually all mobile games transitioned from paid-upfront to the current model of dangling progress in front of the user and offering to pay to relieve the artificial obstacle. (My favourite line is "This is especially true in the world of Rails and other frameworks, where there is a tendency to treat one's app like a high-level character in a role-playing game, equipping it with epic gems, sinatras, capistranos, and other mithril armor into a mighty "application stack"". )

vinceguidry 10y ago
> "This is especially true in the world of Rails and other frameworks, where there is a tendency to treat one's app like a high-level character in a role-playing game, equipping it with epic gems, sinatras, capistranos, and other mithril armor into a mighty "application stack"". The whole reason that ecosystem of gems exists is specifically to alleviate the problem of servicing your app in extreme fear. If you can actually use Capistrano effectively, deployment becomes a solved problem. Mithril armor is actually a great way of putting it.
dilap 10y ago
> It's why virtually all mobile games transitioned from paid-upfront to the current model of dangling progress in front of the user and offering to pay to relieve the artificial obstacle. Yes, that, but also because people will pay a lot more for IAP, over and over again. (Total amounts paid for super-engaged users will run to 10s of thousands of $, far beyond what you can even charge for a single app.) (And on the flip side, the developer has to continue to improve and maintain the game to keep the $ coming.) Much of the time, in my experience, when you pay to download an unknown app, it'll end up being poorly implemented in some way, and never made better. It's like paying $2 for a cup of coffee, but 95% of the time, the coffee turns out to be dirty water.
- DougN7 10y ago
  Exactly. I'd pay to try many more apps if I could refund the crap. The best would be a 1 hour free trial. If I don't uninstall after one hour, bill me. If I do uninstall, don't. Apps could cost 10x what they do now if that was possible because I'd see the value, rather than gambling like today.

gsylvie 10y ago

Interesting how the $6 helped him survive the initial onslaught of new customers, since it would have probably been 10x more writes without this $6 throttle in place. One of his tweets from that same day contains my other favourite line: > there are worse things than being DDOS'ed by people trying to give you money (Source: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/12/the-small-exodus-from-delicious-to-pinboard.html http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/12/the-small-exodus-from-... )