5 ms·

You’ve Either Shipped or You Haven’t

132 points by tswicegood 16y ago

andrewljohnson 16y ago
I like the sentiment that people who have built something are sympathetic to other builders. Other than that, there is no substance to this article. It's first place on HN because it give you a warm and fuzzy feeling. It's pandering, pure and simple.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- alextgordon 16y ago
  How much "substance" is required to be #1 on HN? Two insightful points? Five? The article seeks to make a single point that perhaps some people, in their anger, have missed. That's all, and there's nothing wrong with that.
- ihodes 16y ago
  Generally I ignore comments like these; a downvote and a click away. Perhaps this isn't an appropriate response, But this article does interest hackers and entrepreneurs. This isn't off-topic. If the author had wanted to distill the post a little, or even expound, its thesis would have been more obvious. It's clear, though, that this is about builders, creators, hackers and inventors. The type of people who hang around here. It's about a common experience those who've launched a service, built a product or worked on an idea share. It's an affirmation of the culture of builders, and a recognition that mistakes are made in the process of creation; fix them and move on. Sure, it's not written as an article you'd read in Professional Entrepreneurs Monthly, but it's compelling. It's not a contentless rant, or a watery dribble of verbiage. It's interesting. It's nice, for me at least, to hear about what others go through when forming their ideas into product. I know I've stopped working on at least one close-to-MVP product because I was unsure about it. I didn't want to launch it and see it be ridiculed and mocked: if it was good enough for me, then maybe I should just keep it to myself. So seeing things like this are helpful. They're encouraging. I enjoy them from time to time: this isn't an epidemic that needs to be cracked down on. It is not pandering; why would you say that without justification? Why would you tear down this product of someone else's work without one, small, paragraph; the irony is tangible here. You like the sentiment, but you proceed to do what it damns. But it's not just you; in fact, you less than the other comments that provoked this response. It's so easy to dismiss and ridicule; I debate: I would know. But far too often, comments are spewed out that resemble little straw men; micro-points within an article that are attacked and decimated. I am probably responsible for a few such posts myself; that's something I need to work on. Context makes the work we live in; nothing lives in a vacuum. Arguments are no exception to this.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  Even if we neglect what I thought was the obvious subtext of this article, what we see here is not mere pandering. It's coaching. It took me far too long to understand how important coaching is. To the dispassionate observer, a coach sounds like someone repeating the very, very obvious over and over again. Why, really, do people like the Williams sisters need a coach? Don't they understand as much about tennis and tennis training and winning tennis as anyone on earth? And then you find yourself in the middle of the competition, and you're tired, and you're stressed, and you're at risk of losing your game, and you find that it's really good to hear the voice of a coach or a teammate, carefully drawing your attention to the specific very, very obvious thing that you need to remember right now.
- c1sc0 16y ago
  Sometimes those warm & fuzzy feelings are exactly the comfort an entrepeneur needs: just some positive vibes without substance.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  > I like the sentiment that people who have built something are sympathetic to other builders. That even goes for 'trivial' stuff like planing a piece of wood (try it!) and plumbing. It's amazing how much skill and knowledge goes in to many things that we simply take for granted.
sharksandwich 16y ago
Brings to mind a great Teddy Roosevelt quote It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
- atiw 16y ago
  Like :)
  - atiw 16y ago
    Why the down vote? I don't understand. I just liked that quote.
    - huangm 16y ago
      Because you can express that sentiment with an upvote, a comment should probably have more substance than just the fact that you "liked" the parent comment.
      - jaxn 16y ago
        Absolutely true. But -4 on both those comments seemed a little extreme too.
        minus1 16y ago
        I can understand the first comment getting buried. That's really the only way to discourage the behavior. On the other hand, we could be more welcoming to new posters who clearly have good intentions. I was surprised to find there is no mention of this in the HN comment guidelines. Maybe it could be added? Apologies for continuing with the meta.
pvg 16y ago
Is this a motivational message for the Diaspora folks? There are probably equally meaningful binary decomposition criteria for most everyone else, like "you've either put on clean socks this morning, or you haven't"
mechanical_fish 16y ago
This is a big reason why it's important to promote tinkering at many levels of society, whether it's by holding those Maker Faires, or producing TV shows about modding your motorcycle, or giving seed money to lots of first-time startup founders, or whatever. If you do any amount of engineering or building, you will learn a lot about how the process works. On the flip side, if you have never tried to engineer anything you'll be prone to magical thinking. Too many people's mental model of engineering seems to be drawn from Green Lantern comics: If a gadget cannot do a certain thing, it must be because its builders don't have enough will to succeed. They need to want it more! The extreme example of this problem is in science. Just about nobody in society has actually done any experimental science. Being a fan of science, reading lots of books about science, visiting science museums, or conducting demonstrations of basic procedures doesn't count. It doesn't teach you what it's actually like to explore a problem where the "right answer" is not known in advance, and every data point costs money or time, and there are more knobs than you can afford to turn, and it's hard to resist cherry-picking the data, and your first N hours of work have to be thrown away after you find the boneheaded systematic error.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > The extreme example of this problem is in science. Just about nobody in society has actually done any experimental science. This. A thousand times this. It takes like three weeks of screwing around to get something remotely valuable, and oftentimes a summary takes just a paragraph that people look at and say, "Well, yeah, duh, that's obvious isn't it?"
  - mechanical_fish 16y ago
    One can't say this enough: After your work is done, you are going to look at it, at the product of years of herculean effort, and you are going to say "Damn! This is completely obvious. How did this take me so much time?" Only then will you truly grok Feynman's joke about mathematicians: "Mathematicians can only prove trivial theorems, because any theorem, once proved, is trivial." (When I first read that at age fifteen or so, it was humor. Now it is dark humor. Still funny, of course, but with richer overtones.) Only then will you understand how James Clerk Maxwell's life work can simultaneously be one of the top ten intellectual feats in the history of mankind and something that most undergraduate physics majors learn in a semester or two.
atiw 16y ago
Right on point. Yesterday, we went to Romano's Macaroni Grill. My dinner was delayed by an hour, and the manager apologized. And I was not angry. I understood. I got it. How tough it could be to make things run perfectly. I think we learn a lot of humility and patience, doing our startups. (We did get a free dinner, but somewhere deep inside I wanted to do something nice to him. And although I usually never have dessert, I ordered a Tiramisu, and paid 34% tip on it, to show them indirectly that we understood. Before when I was a student, I would have just taken the dinner free as if I was entitled to it. )
J3L2404 16y ago
There are 10 types of people, those who've shipped and those who haven't.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
code_duck 16y ago
I haven't.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Tichy 16y ago
Sorry, but the reason that Apple tends to get so much flak is their arrogance, not the ignorance of the common people. In fact that article portrays a certain kind of arrogance, too (even though it does not come from Apple).
guelo 16y ago
The critic's work is valuable. As a maker it might rankle but as a consumer ready to dish out hard earned cash it is extremely useful. Unfortunately your blood, sweat and tears does not entitle you to success.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Thats true to a certain extend, but as a consumer (god I hate that term) I wouldn't be here without the makers - without the critics I would have to spend a bit more time finding the right products.
keeptrying 16y ago
This was a swift kick in the pants that I need to ship! Thanks :)
johngalt 16y ago
The list of things an individual hasn't done is always quite a list. This doesn't preclude them of having a valid opinion, as this article implies. You've never been a soldier so you can't comment about war? You've never been in jail so you can't comment about incarceration?
switch 16y ago
great point. It's worth mentioning this applies to pretty much every field and especially to things that have had a lot of effort put into them. Cooking, acting, coding, shipping, public speaking, being a doctor, pretty much everything. Perhaps the better statement would be - You've either produced something of quality and stood behind it or you haven't.
sdsantos 16y ago
It remembers me of another article, about producers and consumers: "The Single Most Important Career Question You Can Ask Yourself" http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2008/05/18/the-single-most-important-career-question-you-can-ask-yourself/ http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2008/05/18/the-single-most-impo... If you’ve been reading startup blogs for years and never started anything, it’s time to accept that your tendency is to be a consumer. It’s not to say you can’t break out of that classification by starting something, but if you haven’t done it thus far you’re not likely to do it soon without some external motivation (maybe this post?). If you have 50 software product ideas and your hard drive is littered with folders containing 30 lines of code from each, you tend towards being a consumer (or at least a producer who has trouble finishing things). And if you figure out that you are a producer, stop daydreaming about the day you’ll make things happen. Start making it happen in the next 30 days, or forever hold your peace. Once again, is the ability to ship something the major distinction.
- v21 16y ago
  And this reminds me of a talk, by Sophie Houlden, called "computer games are awesome, but you suck because you haven’t made one yet, you lazy bastard." http://www.sophiehoulden.com/blog/?p=84#more-84 http://www.sophiehoulden.com/blog/?p=84#more-84
code_duck 16y ago
I do know what it's like. I became a lot less harsh in my attitude towards companies I deal with after I started working on a software dev. team. However, I'm still seething with hatred for management. Maybe if I'm an exec someday, I'll learn to empathize.

132 points by tswicegood 16y ago

I like the sentiment that people who have built something are sympathetic to other builders. Other than that, there is no substance to this article. It's first place on HN because it give you a warm and fuzzy feeling. It's pandering, pure and simple.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
alextgordon 16y ago
How much "substance" is required to be #1 on HN? Two insightful points? Five? The article seeks to make a single point that perhaps some people, in their anger, have missed. That's all, and there's nothing wrong with that.
ihodes 16y ago
Generally I ignore comments like these; a downvote and a click away. Perhaps this isn't an appropriate response, But this article does interest hackers and entrepreneurs. This isn't off-topic. If the author had wanted to distill the post a little, or even expound, its thesis would have been more obvious. It's clear, though, that this is about builders, creators, hackers and inventors. The type of people who hang around here. It's about a common experience those who've launched a service, built a product or worked on an idea share. It's an affirmation of the culture of builders, and a recognition that mistakes are made in the process of creation; fix them and move on. Sure, it's not written as an article you'd read in Professional Entrepreneurs Monthly, but it's compelling. It's not a contentless rant, or a watery dribble of verbiage. It's interesting. It's nice, for me at least, to hear about what others go through when forming their ideas into product. I know I've stopped working on at least one close-to-MVP product because I was unsure about it. I didn't want to launch it and see it be ridiculed and mocked: if it was good enough for me, then maybe I should just keep it to myself. So seeing things like this are helpful. They're encouraging. I enjoy them from time to time: this isn't an epidemic that needs to be cracked down on. It is not pandering; why would you say that without justification? Why would you tear down this product of someone else's work without one, small, paragraph; the irony is tangible here. You like the sentiment, but you proceed to do what it damns. But it's not just you; in fact, you less than the other comments that provoked this response. It's so easy to dismiss and ridicule; I debate: I would know. But far too often, comments are spewed out that resemble little straw men; micro-points within an article that are attacked and decimated. I am probably responsible for a few such posts myself; that's something I need to work on. Context makes the work we live in; nothing lives in a vacuum. Arguments are no exception to this.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
Even if we neglect what I thought was the obvious subtext of this article, what we see here is not mere pandering. It's coaching. It took me far too long to understand how important coaching is. To the dispassionate observer, a coach sounds like someone repeating the very, very obvious over and over again. Why, really, do people like the Williams sisters need a coach? Don't they understand as much about tennis and tennis training and winning tennis as anyone on earth? And then you find yourself in the middle of the competition, and you're tired, and you're stressed, and you're at risk of losing your game, and you find that it's really good to hear the voice of a coach or a teammate, carefully drawing your attention to the specific very, very obvious thing that you need to remember right now.
c1sc0 16y ago
Sometimes those warm & fuzzy feelings are exactly the comfort an entrepeneur needs: just some positive vibes without substance.
jacquesm 16y ago
> I like the sentiment that people who have built something are sympathetic to other builders. That even goes for 'trivial' stuff like planing a piece of wood (try it!) and plumbing. It's amazing how much skill and knowledge goes in to many things that we simply take for granted.

sharksandwich 16y ago

Brings to mind a great Teddy Roosevelt quote It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

atiw 16y ago
Like :)
- atiw 16y ago
  Why the down vote? I don't understand. I just liked that quote.
  - huangm 16y ago
    Because you can express that sentiment with an upvote, a comment should probably have more substance than just the fact that you "liked" the parent comment.
    - jaxn 16y ago
      Absolutely true. But -4 on both those comments seemed a little extreme too.
      - minus1 16y ago
        I can understand the first comment getting buried. That's really the only way to discourage the behavior. On the other hand, we could be more welcoming to new posters who clearly have good intentions. I was surprised to find there is no mention of this in the HN comment guidelines. Maybe it could be added? Apologies for continuing with the meta.

pvg 16y ago

Is this a motivational message for the Diaspora folks? There are probably equally meaningful binary decomposition criteria for most everyone else, like "you've either put on clean socks this morning, or you haven't"

mechanical_fish 16y ago

This is a big reason why it's important to promote tinkering at many levels of society, whether it's by holding those Maker Faires, or producing TV shows about modding your motorcycle, or giving seed money to lots of first-time startup founders, or whatever. If you do any amount of engineering or building, you will learn a lot about how the process works. On the flip side, if you have never tried to engineer anything you'll be prone to magical thinking. Too many people's mental model of engineering seems to be drawn from Green Lantern comics: If a gadget cannot do a certain thing, it must be because its builders don't have enough will to succeed. They need to want it more! The extreme example of this problem is in science. Just about nobody in society has actually done any experimental science. Being a fan of science, reading lots of books about science, visiting science museums, or conducting demonstrations of basic procedures doesn't count. It doesn't teach you what it's actually like to explore a problem where the "right answer" is not known in advance, and every data point costs money or time, and there are more knobs than you can afford to turn, and it's hard to resist cherry-picking the data, and your first N hours of work have to be thrown away after you find the boneheaded systematic error.

lionhearted 16y ago
> The extreme example of this problem is in science. Just about nobody in society has actually done any experimental science. This. A thousand times this. It takes like three weeks of screwing around to get something remotely valuable, and oftentimes a summary takes just a paragraph that people look at and say, "Well, yeah, duh, that's obvious isn't it?"
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  One can't say this enough: After your work is done, you are going to look at it, at the product of years of herculean effort, and you are going to say "Damn! This is completely obvious. How did this take me so much time?" Only then will you truly grok Feynman's joke about mathematicians: "Mathematicians can only prove trivial theorems, because any theorem, once proved, is trivial." (When I first read that at age fifteen or so, it was humor. Now it is dark humor. Still funny, of course, but with richer overtones.) Only then will you understand how James Clerk Maxwell's life work can simultaneously be one of the top ten intellectual feats in the history of mankind and something that most undergraduate physics majors learn in a semester or two.

atiw 16y ago

Right on point. Yesterday, we went to Romano's Macaroni Grill. My dinner was delayed by an hour, and the manager apologized. And I was not angry. I understood. I got it. How tough it could be to make things run perfectly. I think we learn a lot of humility and patience, doing our startups. (We did get a free dinner, but somewhere deep inside I wanted to do something nice to him. And although I usually never have dessert, I ordered a Tiramisu, and paid 34% tip on it, to show them indirectly that we understood. Before when I was a student, I would have just taken the dinner free as if I was entitled to it. )

J3L2404 16y ago

There are 10 types of people, those who've shipped and those who haven't.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

code_duck 16y ago

I haven't.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

Tichy 16y ago

Sorry, but the reason that Apple tends to get so much flak is their arrogance, not the ignorance of the common people. In fact that article portrays a certain kind of arrogance, too (even though it does not come from Apple).

guelo 16y ago

The critic's work is valuable. As a maker it might rankle but as a consumer ready to dish out hard earned cash it is extremely useful. Unfortunately your blood, sweat and tears does not entitle you to success.

tomjen3 16y ago
Thats true to a certain extend, but as a consumer (god I hate that term) I wouldn't be here without the makers - without the critics I would have to spend a bit more time finding the right products.

keeptrying 16y ago

This was a swift kick in the pants that I need to ship! Thanks :)

johngalt 16y ago

The list of things an individual hasn't done is always quite a list. This doesn't preclude them of having a valid opinion, as this article implies. You've never been a soldier so you can't comment about war? You've never been in jail so you can't comment about incarceration?

switch 16y ago

great point. It's worth mentioning this applies to pretty much every field and especially to things that have had a lot of effort put into them. Cooking, acting, coding, shipping, public speaking, being a doctor, pretty much everything. Perhaps the better statement would be - You've either produced something of quality and stood behind it or you haven't.

sdsantos 16y ago

It remembers me of another article, about producers and consumers: "The Single Most Important Career Question You Can Ask Yourself" http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2008/05/18/the-single-most-important-career-question-you-can-ask-yourself/ http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2008/05/18/the-single-most-impo... If you’ve been reading startup blogs for years and never started anything, it’s time to accept that your tendency is to be a consumer. It’s not to say you can’t break out of that classification by starting something, but if you haven’t done it thus far you’re not likely to do it soon without some external motivation (maybe this post?). If you have 50 software product ideas and your hard drive is littered with folders containing 30 lines of code from each, you tend towards being a consumer (or at least a producer who has trouble finishing things). And if you figure out that you are a producer, stop daydreaming about the day you’ll make things happen. Start making it happen in the next 30 days, or forever hold your peace. Once again, is the ability to ship something the major distinction.

v21 16y ago
And this reminds me of a talk, by Sophie Houlden, called "computer games are awesome, but you suck because you haven’t made one yet, you lazy bastard." http://www.sophiehoulden.com/blog/?p=84#more-84 http://www.sophiehoulden.com/blog/?p=84#more-84

code_duck 16y ago

I do know what it's like. I became a lot less harsh in my attitude towards companies I deal with after I started working on a software dev. team. However, I'm still seething with hatred for management. Maybe if I'm an exec someday, I'll learn to empathize.