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Unkown Unknowns: Why you should release early
- wadeboggs 10y agoTypo
- franciscop 10y agoTypo: "your wrong" => "you're wrong". Modern CSS that doesn't support my browser but the author is still a human (;
- forgottenacc57 10y agoHuh?
- danieka 10y agoThank you for pointing out the typo, after devastating shame I have now fixed all instance of it, I hope :) One benefit of running your own blog is being able to use the CSS you want ;)
- franciscop 10y agoOh I know about breaking things with CSS for fun, this is mine: https://picnicss.com/ https://picnicss.com/ I'll probably reference this post later on, good topic and well applied to software dev.
- nerdy 10y agoNope. Any place "you are" makes sense should be "you're": - "If your not a domain expert..." - "No, it’s not the techniques your lacking."
- danieka 10y agoThank you for pointing that out, next time I publish I'll make sure to have a friend proofread before hitting submit.
- mbfg 10y agowhile we are being pendantic, there's Unkown
- jfk13 10y agoWhile we are being pedantic, I don't think "pendantic" is a word.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- danieka 10y agoThanks, maybe I released a bit to early :)
- jwilk 10y agoIt's never just one typo. :-P preferrably → preferably Unkown → Unknown Unknows → Unknowns a.k.a → a.k.a. it’s is → it is erraneous → erroneous
- ge96 10y agoWhat if you don't even know what your "market" is or your "value" ie. what you're selling? edit: haha Dunning-Krueger effect, been a while since I used/looked at that "word" You don't floss? Gross haha. Can't say all the time but inevitably there's crap in between your teeth. Oh well to each his own. I guess it depends where you are/if floss is common thing to have. Why did you separate A K A? Is that how it's written, time to Google.
- acjohnson55 10y agoThis reminds me of an article I read about a week ago: https://hackernoon.com/the-mvp-is-dead-long-live-the-rat-233d5d16ab02 https://hackernoon.com/the-mvp-is-dead-long-live-the-rat-233...
- mixmastamyk 10y agoReads like the spiral dev model.
- milesf 10y agoClever title :) By releasing the article early, the typo is spotted quickly.
- QuercusMax 10y agoI also enjoy that the HN title has a different typo than the article - "Unkown Unknowns" vs "Unknown Unknows". And the heading in the article is "Unkown Unknows". I can't tell if these are deliberate or not...
- shurcooL 10y agoThe title on the blog post page itself seems to be corrected now, but not on the user's home page.
- giancarlostoro 10y agoI was looking at this too, surprised it was not fixed on the HN side yet considering how often submission titles get updated here.
- grzm 10y agoSubmission titles get updated if either the author (within a time limit) or a mod notices that there's an error in the title. The mods don't see everything, but do respond to email. If a title needs updating, you can contact the mods via the Contact link in the footer.
- milesf 10y agoAaaand... it's been corrected :) I wonder now if the author meant to do that? Are they iterating even on blog posts?
- derwiki 10y ago> Your browser does not support grids. Upgrade or suffer the subpar layout. Chrome? But OK, snark at me anyway..
- danieka 10y agoSorry, didn't mean to be snarky. Chrome 57 supports grids, but I am aware that support for grids is far from common. Hope you could enjoy the article anyway.
- stan_rogers 10y agoHave you restarted it recently? CSS Grid support without flags in mainstream is very recent (last week?).
- spectistcles 10y ago37% isn't exactly mainstream... to contrast, flexbox is at 97% http://caniuse.com/#search=grid http://caniuse.com/#search=grid
- thejosh 10y agolatest version, not mainstream as in a lot of browsers support it.
- legulere 10y agoUnknown unknowns also is a reason for the opposite - to be more careful releasing things that might be dangerous. Often dangerous failures that happen are unknown unknowns. Fukushima is just one example for this.
- acidburnNSA 10y agoFukushima wasn't an unknown unknown. The consequences of that event were fairly preventable. http://mdcsystems.com/fukushima-dai-ichi-black-swan-event-or-engineering-design-error/ http://mdcsystems.com/fukushima-dai-ichi-black-swan-event-or...
- doall 10y agoIt was preventable, but as the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office says, it was not predictable. Aftermath is easy :)
- Alex3917 10y ago> it was not predictable How do you explain the fact that this exact scenario was predicted in advance then? E.g.: https://news.usc.edu/86362/fukushima-disaster-was-preventable-new-study-finds/ https://news.usc.edu/86362/fukushima-disaster-was-preventabl...
- pella 10y agoit is better: Taleb (2009) https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb09/taleb09_index.html https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb09/taleb09_index.html TEN PRINCIPLES FOR A BLACK-SWAN-ROBUST WORLD "4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards."
- doall 10y ago
- nickpsecurity 10y agoI used to say you could release stuff often if it wasn't safety- or security-critical. The latter should be reviewed & hit with various scenarios before any release. The model of non-critical software seems to be purely time-to-market, adding features, sometimes subtracting them as a differentiator, and lock-in. This combo created several multi-billion dollar firms plus lots of other shops raking in the big cash. Minus the lock-in, the model drives the successful projects in FOSS. The bugs can be fixed later with patches which can even be sold to customers. You win then win again. These days I'll add any non-regulated, security-critical product to the list of things to rush simply because most of them are crap. The likes of McAffee and RSA Inc. got to the top with the security "features" w/ correct extra stuff (eg tie-in's to Microsoft stack), sales teams, support, and so on. They didn't do a lot on "assurance" that what they delivered was secure itself or worked despite clever adversaries. So, if you want money or market share, just do exactly what they did. I will add that there's methods for developing software that still move quickly while reducing defects. Particularly, if unreliability might hurt you, follow Cleanroom methodology's take on testing by focusing on usage-driven testing. Come up with as many scenarios as possible representing how users will actually use the product. Make sure all those scenarios pass. That means the defects that slip through are those average user might never see. Obviously, things like memory-safe languages, interface checks, and quality libraries from 3rd parties help, too. This collectively gets you better defect rate than most of industry with hardly any extra work.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jdalt 10y ago> I know flossing is good, my dentist even claims it is essential. I don’t doubt he’s right. The medical evidence for the efficacy of flossing is fairly scant: http://www.vox.com/2016/8/2/12352226/dental-floss-even-work http://www.vox.com/2016/8/2/12352226/dental-floss-even-work
- jdormit 10y agoI trust the advice of my dentist more than I trust Vox. And my dentist says if I don't floss I will probably get gum disease.
- jdalt 10y agoI also floss everyday. For me it's more of a Pascal's wager plus affirmation of the hygienist thing.
- danjambur 10y agoJust because there is no medical evidence, it doesn't mean that you don't benefit from flossing, it just means nobody has spent the money to prove the benefits of flossing.
- cjcole 10y agoI stopped flossing for a while (forget why) right before a check-up. The "gum quality" numbers (scale of 1-5) that the hygienist called out for each tooth gap were conspicuously worse than usual. I hadn't told them I hadn't been flossing. After that feedback, I regained flossing religion. Come next check-up, the numbers were back in the normal range. Feel free to file this anecdata as appropriate to your needs.
- white-flame 10y agoI absolutely hate flossing and never do it. I bought one of those dental pressure washer things to compensate, and I love it. It blasts piles of food gunk out from between your teeth, way better than flossing will ever hope to accomplish, as well as flushes under the gumline. Plus, it takes less time than flossing. The dental workers have commented that I floss very well, joke's on them. ;-) Electric toothbrushes are also great for keeping your teeth very clean, and can penetrate between your teeth depending on the design.
- mooreds 10y agoAnd, as he mentions, release as much as possible without writing a single line of code. Code gets expensive quickly. Expensive to scope, expensive to write, expensive to change, expensive to maintain. Write code when doing it manually is too painful.
- tedmiston 10y agoIn some sense this is the biggest strength of nontechnical cofounders: defaulting to finding a way to test their hypotheses without writing code.
- Mz 10y agoI wish I shared that sentiment. I am a non technical wannabe. I think I have done a lot of important work so far in terms of figuring out what works, but I feel like it will never get anywhere. Geez. And I envy the coders, who seem to get so much more done. The grass is always greener...
- mooreds 10y agoHaha. Coders can get a lot of things done, but are they the right things? Sometimes it can be so fun to build that you don't actually ship.
- Mz 10y agoI am still not shipping. I also make a lot less money than coders. Six of one, half dozen of the other...
- mooreds 10y agoAll I can tell you is that my co-founders weren't technical but the relationships and market research they'd done made it far easier to build the right product when I (as technical co-founder) came on board.
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- z3t4 10y agoOne of my fears is that the first impression is so important. It's very hard to make people try your product for a second time. Reviews get written and it's not like people are gonna update their reviews when all the issues have been fixed.
- johns 10y agoThere are a lot of people.
- plainOldText 10y agoSure, but the first people might build the momentum, or not.
- chrisper 10y agoIf you get a 2 star average on yelp on grand opening of your new restaurant, a lot of people won't even bother coming even if you fixed most of the complaints.
- ams6110 10y agoA lot of people don't use yelp.
- tedmiston 10y agoI think this is less important on the web than native. Iterative releases feel natural on the web. If something solves a real problem I'll use it while they work out design kinks.
- danieka 10y agoI completely agree, one of the reasons that we've been reluctant to release is that we've been developing a native app. Considering how long it takes to push a bug fix, with Apple approving and all, you can expect 4 days of downtime if you really screw up. If you compare that with web, as many pointed out my article had a lot of spelling errors but that was easily corrected. The real challenge is testing your assumptions without ever releasing an app or website :)
- z3t4 10y agoSometimes you'll have a really good product, that no one wants ... See Silicon Valley TV series.
- GoToRO 10y agoThe problem with realeasing early is that -early- is not clearly defined for your project...
- a3n 10y agoMark Twain apparently did not say the opening quote. https://newrepublic.com/minutes/126677/it-aint-dont-know-gets-trouble-must-big-short-opens-fake-mark-twain-quote https://newrepublic.com/minutes/126677/it-aint-dont-know-get... The link within the link: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/05/30/better-know/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/05/30/better-know/
- mjevans 10y agoHow I would define 'early': * First minimum viable product (core features) - clearly label as such * Take feedback from /customers/ (and those who claim they'd be if X were a feature; 'market research') * If possible use any existing off the shelf process** if there's a concept of how the process might be streamlined / optimized / customized / automated in full.
- Bino 10y agoDon't confuse this with releasing buggy code (don't do that, it's really hard to recover from), it's about features.