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I typically run my ideas through a few friends on IRC first. They'll play devil's advocate on my ideas. If I still like it I'll draw up a little spec or gener

by symkat 16y ago

I typically run my ideas through a few friends on IRC first. They'll play devil's advocate on my ideas. If I still like it I'll draw up a little spec or general overview, and then I'll share it with some co-workers and best friends. Depending on how excited I am at this point and how much work there is to do, it might get done or it might be in my queue of things to look at later. I have a lot of stuff marked "Later". With regard to someone stealing the idea, I don't really worry about it. I regularly give ideas I've had away, especially if I think I'll never make them. A few years ago a friend and I were at a restaurant and there guys were trying to figure out something to build on the iPhone, my friend and I had just come back from an amusement park in southern California and I suggested a custom map of amusement parks that has points of interest for all the restaurants and rides and gets you there within the boundaries of the pathways in the park. I had the idea earlier that day, but I would never build it myself, so to me it was fairly useless.

mohsen 16y ago
I have a lot of stuff marked "Later". The sad story of my life... But why wouldn't you make that app? Didn't it seem like a great idea at the time?
- sudont 16y ago
  Filing things away for "Later" can be terrible. Avoid that brain crack! (Brain crack discussed here:) http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html
- symkat 16y ago
  Mainly because of the amount of time I would have had to devote to it, and the amount of things I would have had to learn. It was an idea of "That would be cool to have." It wasn't a project I would be passionate about. I go to amusement parks about once every other year. I'd have to have been in the park a lot to map out points where you could walk, write the algorithms for navigating the park from any random point of interest to any other random point of interest in a reasonably efficient way while following the boundaries of the pathways. I'd have to have kept the app updated when anything changed at the park, including things like "For two weeks, this one path is blocked off because construction is happening" which happens fairly regularly at Knott's Berry Farm. Although those are all challenges I could have overcome given the time and resources, it wasn't something I would be very passionate about and it would die out as a result. I've had a lot of reasonably good ideas, and some of them have worked out rather well in the past. Most of them I don't pursue more than as an idle thought. Those I choose to work on I do as a result of how much fun they will be, how passionately I feel about what I'm building, and how challenging I think it will be. A few weeks ago How I Met Your Mother inspired the idea for http://www.notanewyorker.com/ http://www.notanewyorker.com/ and that was something I said, "I'll build it tonight, I have nothing better to do." It's a cute little website, and the biggest motivating factor was I thought it would be funny, and using Python on Google AppEngine would be interesting because I've not used it to build anything like that. I found I hate Google AppEngine now though.

by symkat 16y ago

mohsen 16y ago

I have a lot of stuff marked "Later". The sad story of my life... But why wouldn't you make that app? Didn't it seem like a great idea at the time?

sudont 16y ago
Filing things away for "Later" can be terrible. Avoid that brain crack! (Brain crack discussed here:) http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html
symkat 16y ago
Mainly because of the amount of time I would have had to devote to it, and the amount of things I would have had to learn. It was an idea of "That would be cool to have." It wasn't a project I would be passionate about. I go to amusement parks about once every other year. I'd have to have been in the park a lot to map out points where you could walk, write the algorithms for navigating the park from any random point of interest to any other random point of interest in a reasonably efficient way while following the boundaries of the pathways. I'd have to have kept the app updated when anything changed at the park, including things like "For two weeks, this one path is blocked off because construction is happening" which happens fairly regularly at Knott's Berry Farm. Although those are all challenges I could have overcome given the time and resources, it wasn't something I would be very passionate about and it would die out as a result. I've had a lot of reasonably good ideas, and some of them have worked out rather well in the past. Most of them I don't pursue more than as an idle thought. Those I choose to work on I do as a result of how much fun they will be, how passionately I feel about what I'm building, and how challenging I think it will be. A few weeks ago How I Met Your Mother inspired the idea for http://www.notanewyorker.com/ http://www.notanewyorker.com/ and that was something I said, "I'll build it tonight, I have nothing better to do." It's a cute little website, and the biggest motivating factor was I thought it would be funny, and using Python on Google AppEngine would be interesting because I've not used it to build anything like that. I found I hate Google AppEngine now though.