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You're refusing to learn from someone who lived it. I also know of zero services which failed because they couldn't scale their technology. But I know of 100s t

by pbreit 10y ago

You're refusing to learn from someone who lived it. I also know of zero services which failed because they couldn't scale their technology. But I know of 100s that failed because they couldn't get enough users or usage. Your example about the DB tables is exactly the trap to avoid while you are iterating rapidly to try and find product/market fit.

timewarrior 10y ago
Thanks for putting across your point in such a straight forward way. I didn't call out directly not the DB tables point. This kind of premature optimization is a huge red flag and I would anyone I am advising to avoid it.
an_d_rew 10y ago
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I've been part of many projects that couldn't scale because lack of forethought meant there was a nasty implicit O(n^2) thing going on when it could have easily been designed to be O(n log n). Almost all of these projects were killed with CYA hand waving about "just not fast enough".
- timewarrior 10y ago
  Can you please share some examples. I would love to learn from your experience.
cyberferret 10y ago
You are assuming that I haven't "lived it". Over the past 2 or 3 years, I have built around 8 web apps. Some which got virtually no traction at all, and some which have reached a happy medium of users and income. None which have reached mega scale or millions of users (yet). Some of the (real world) feedback I got from the web apps that failed to get off the ground were due mainly to our customers complaining that: * pages were taking too long to reload. * not enough fields on a particular data table to store information in * missing API * pages that would refresh in entirety instead of just updating the changed portions Most customers didn't stick around to wait for us to address or fix the issues - there were plenty of other competitive products that fitted them better that they could start using that same day. A couple of those sites also got negative feedback on Reddit or HN because I hosted the front end website on a $5 VPS server and when the site suffered the inevitable 'hug of death' from posting to these sites, they immediately went down due to inability to scale under the sudden deluge of visitors, and I received uncomplimentary feedback on that (where people actually elected to post feedback rather than just close the browser tab and completely forget and move on from my app). Yes, over thinking scaling and design is bad, but putting it aside as a 'totally not important now' factor is also just as bad, if not worse, in my 'lived it' experience.
- timewarrior 10y ago
  It is great that you got a few which got traction out of 8 tries. This is an incredible success rate. Most people see much less success. The original suggestion is geared towards first few tries that people make. Once they have made a few attempts, they learn from it and naturally build more scalable products without spending extra effort. You have already read my story about my first try which had a very poor start. My subsequent efforts have scaled in that order without needing a single rewrite. However, if they spend too long procrastinating, worrying about and investing in scale - they are wasting precious time which would be better spent finding product market fit.
  - cyberferret 10y ago
    Thanks, and also thank you for not reading my posts the wrong way. I am in no way having a go at you or refuting what you say. You've built something and got it to a level that many of us can only dream of, and for that you have my admiration and respect. Like you, each subsequent app that I built contained the lessons learned from the previous efforts - better front end frameworks, better data table normalising, better hosting infrastructure etc. Part of me always thinks back to the ones that didn't work, and I always ask myself - would they have worked if they had faster page refreshes, or more flexible data entry? Perhaps if I had spent more time in the planning and design before I launched them, they may not have sunk as quickly? Those 1000 users that time who came from my HN post and saw an 'Error 500' page - could a fraction of them been the ones who would have signed up and made us profitable if they didn't see the error page as their first introduction to my app?? For that reason alone, I am always skeptical of any post that promotes 'iterate often and fast' or 'fail quickly' rather than 'spend time on design and a unique experience'...
    - timewarrior 10y ago
      It's all in good spirit of sharing and learning. When you are thinking back, also consider the alternative where could you have missed opportunities and product launches because of extra effort spent on scaling upfront. It's all good learning in the end. It's great to be in your situation. Keep at it and you will see great success in future!

by pbreit 10y ago

timewarrior 10y ago

Thanks for putting across your point in such a straight forward way. I didn't call out directly not the DB tables point. This kind of premature optimization is a huge red flag and I would anyone I am advising to avoid it.

an_d_rew 10y ago

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I've been part of many projects that couldn't scale because lack of forethought meant there was a nasty implicit O(n^2) thing going on when it could have easily been designed to be O(n log n). Almost all of these projects were killed with CYA hand waving about "just not fast enough".

timewarrior 10y ago
Can you please share some examples. I would love to learn from your experience.

cyberferret 10y ago

You are assuming that I haven't "lived it". Over the past 2 or 3 years, I have built around 8 web apps. Some which got virtually no traction at all, and some which have reached a happy medium of users and income. None which have reached mega scale or millions of users (yet). Some of the (real world) feedback I got from the web apps that failed to get off the ground were due mainly to our customers complaining that: * pages were taking too long to reload. * not enough fields on a particular data table to store information in * missing API * pages that would refresh in entirety instead of just updating the changed portions Most customers didn't stick around to wait for us to address or fix the issues - there were plenty of other competitive products that fitted them better that they could start using that same day. A couple of those sites also got negative feedback on Reddit or HN because I hosted the front end website on a $5 VPS server and when the site suffered the inevitable 'hug of death' from posting to these sites, they immediately went down due to inability to scale under the sudden deluge of visitors, and I received uncomplimentary feedback on that (where people actually elected to post feedback rather than just close the browser tab and completely forget and move on from my app). Yes, over thinking scaling and design is bad, but putting it aside as a 'totally not important now' factor is also just as bad, if not worse, in my 'lived it' experience.

timewarrior 10y ago
It is great that you got a few which got traction out of 8 tries. This is an incredible success rate. Most people see much less success. The original suggestion is geared towards first few tries that people make. Once they have made a few attempts, they learn from it and naturally build more scalable products without spending extra effort. You have already read my story about my first try which had a very poor start. My subsequent efforts have scaled in that order without needing a single rewrite. However, if they spend too long procrastinating, worrying about and investing in scale - they are wasting precious time which would be better spent finding product market fit.
- cyberferret 10y ago
  Thanks, and also thank you for not reading my posts the wrong way. I am in no way having a go at you or refuting what you say. You've built something and got it to a level that many of us can only dream of, and for that you have my admiration and respect. Like you, each subsequent app that I built contained the lessons learned from the previous efforts - better front end frameworks, better data table normalising, better hosting infrastructure etc. Part of me always thinks back to the ones that didn't work, and I always ask myself - would they have worked if they had faster page refreshes, or more flexible data entry? Perhaps if I had spent more time in the planning and design before I launched them, they may not have sunk as quickly? Those 1000 users that time who came from my HN post and saw an 'Error 500' page - could a fraction of them been the ones who would have signed up and made us profitable if they didn't see the error page as their first introduction to my app?? For that reason alone, I am always skeptical of any post that promotes 'iterate often and fast' or 'fail quickly' rather than 'spend time on design and a unique experience'...
  - timewarrior 10y ago
    It's all in good spirit of sharing and learning. When you are thinking back, also consider the alternative where could you have missed opportunities and product launches because of extra effort spent on scaling upfront. It's all good learning in the end. It's great to be in your situation. Keep at it and you will see great success in future!