7 ms·
Great piece. Last year, I forced myself to release something every two weeks -- even if it wasn't finished or was just a poorly-written blog post. I can proudl
by dvt 8y ago
Great piece.
Last year, I forced myself to release something every two weeks -- even if it wasn't finished or was just a poorly-written blog post. I can proudly say it was one of the most productive years of my life[1]. Most of those projects won't see the light of day -- no one will care and no one will notice -- but releasing is far better than endless planning.
And just to really hit it home: this year I built Lofi (a small Spotify player replacement[2]) and I shared it on reddit[3] (and on HN). But if you read most of the posts, it's a whole bunch of angry people arguing about Electron sucking, about why the app is 100mb, about how C++ and Qt would be better, etc. etc. The difference between me and those people? I'm already working on my next project ;)
[1] https://dvt.name/2019/01/06/retrospective-stuff-2018/ https://dvt.name/2019/01/06/retrospective-stuff-2018/
[2] https://www.lofi.rocks/ https://www.lofi.rocks/
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/aufj4m/lofi_a_minimalist_spotify_player_with_webgl/ https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/aufj4m/lofi_a_...
- siwatanejo 8y agoWell, Electron does suck.
- shdh 8y agoMany of your project links are dead.
- vcavallo 8y agoDid you completely miss what he said?
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoIf so, that makes 2 of us. I re-read the post, and he talks about releasing something on a regular basis. I don't see anything about then going back and unpublishing things once he decides it actually isn't good enough? Sorry if there are edits in play or I'm just missing something, but it sure looks to me like broken links should still be surprising.
- dvt 8y agoA few domains lapsed, and I took spoiled.tv offline (as it was just burning a hole in my wallet). Sometimes, you need to know when to call it quits.
- fxfan 8y agoI had just made a post about keynav and here I see you ;)
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoHeh:) As things go to be known for, that's pretty good option :-)
- gotocake 8y agoGreat piece. Last year, I forced myself to release something every two weeks Out of habit I tend to check the comments here before reading the article, and um... I did a serious double-take between the title and your opening sentence. For about a second I just stopped and stared at the phrase, “even if it wasn’t finished” and just thought, “Wow... here’s a guy with high standards!” Anyway, then I read on, sighed, chuckled, and read the (very good) blog post.
- drilldrive 8y agoI reread your comment about five times and still am not sure what you are saying here, my apologies.
- wooboo 8y agoThe commenter took the post title literally/without context and applied that literal understanding to the top level comment.
- lazugod 8y agoThe title mentions masturbation and the top commenter said they forced themself to release something, which could be read as an euphemism for masturbation.
- m3at 8y agoHe misunderstood that the masturbation was not purely intellectual
- CreepGin 8y agoWell I guess it's not everyday you see "Masturbation" in a HN #1 post's title and the sentence "I forced myself to release something every two weeks" in the first top comment.
- haser_au 8y agoGet your mind in the gutter
- Chris_Chambers 8y ago
- vcavallo 8y agoAwesome! Does Lofi work on Linux? It would be a fantastic addition to my i3 setup (and the main Spotify player can go nowhere near as small as I want it!)
- dvt 8y agoSomeone actually built it on Linux[1] but there's a few bugs that need to be addressed (mostly dealing with graphics/transparency issues) before it's ready for prime time. [1] https://github.com/dvx/lofi/issues/6 https://github.com/dvx/lofi/issues/6
- jjeaff 8y agoI'm confused that so many people on this site seem to be working on ancient weak sauce computers. The difference between a 1mb and 100mb app today is nil. I run Slack, vscode, and tons of other apps. Even if they take few gigs of RAM each, there's 62 more where that came from. They all run just fine. It's like a forum full of carpenters that are using Black and Decker tools to build houses.
- Aeolun 8y ago64GB RAM is far from common. My 16GB is regularly tested by fancy new startups thinking it’s fine if their app burns 7GB (I’m looking at you Zeplin!).
- jimmy1 8y agoMost of us are running other, more important shit that takes up RAM, like an IDE for my code and DB, plus some shells, text editors, etc. If we can get the less important shit to run faster, it would be a win. Your desktop isn't magic either. Ever run a benchmark with slack turned on versus off? Try it out sometime. You'll be amazed.
- lsen001 8y agoWhat's your target audience? Who are you building apps for? Yourself, with 64GB of RAM, or much more common users with 4-16GB?
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago> or much more common users with 4-16GB? Or the sizable portion of end-users who won't or can't upgrade past 2G; it's a pain to do that on a modern system, but it does work.
- jjeaff 8y agoThat's a different story. But a lot of time, people are complaining about tools for developers like VS Code.
- Johnny555 8y agoMany of us are running on corporate computers at work and don't have the freedom to spec a 64GB computer
- noonespecial 8y agoThat's the thing isn't it? People are always so sure that the one they could have built but didn't is so much better than the one you could build and did. Except for that one tiny detail of not actually existing.
- dvt 8y agoSo true. I remember a few years ago when I built Game:ref[1], everyone on reddit was an eSports anti-cheat expert. Right now, they're all Qt/C++ experts. It comes and goes in waves ;) [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/introducing-gameref-the-anti-cheat-hardware/ https://www.pcgamer.com/introducing-gameref-the-anti-cheat-h...
- marknadal 8y agoThank you for posting your original comment, it actually encourages me that this is a normal thing and means all the more to ignore the haters. Thank you for actually shipping. Thank you for actually being positive. Thank you for being brave enough to speak about your experience. We need more people like you in the world.
- dvt 8y agoThanks for your kind words! Btw, Gun is awesome :) If you're ever in LA, let's grab a coffee.
- shaan7 8y ago> Right now, they're all Qt/C++ experts I wish ..
- rdiddly 8y agoJust would like to offer a joke and a quote from the music world. The joke is, How many guitar players does it take to screw in a light bulb? And the answer is, 10: 1 to do it, and 9 to stand around saying how they could've done it better. The quote is from Ian MacKaye: "The best records are the ones that get made."
- psandersen 8y agoThis is good advice, will read the article now. Just checked out lofi, looks really great actually! Been looking for a minimalistic spotify visualiser / interface for my linux htpc.
- DC-3 8y agoI'm glad that not every programmer follows your example and spews out a new piece of half-baked, buggy, bloated software every fortnight. I don't know why you feel superior about the fact that you don't like executing projects to a high standard.
- dvt 8y agoIt's pretty easy to insult someone anonymously online. This is why I actually make a point of having my real identity connected to my HN (and reddit) account. But let me just say this: after I built Lofi and got more hate than I would've imagined for what was really a throwaway project, a great dread came over me. What if I was new at programming? What if I was just a college or high school kid learning how to use Electron because I simply didn't know C++ or Java or what-have-you? I know that if I got this much hate in my teens or early 20s, it would've discouraged me tremendously from pursuing startups, programming, and building. I really hope you realize that your words can deeply affect people. I have thick skin, went to an elite school, wrote a book, I'm arrogant af, and couldn't give a damn about what you have to say, dear anonymous HN commenter.... ...however, keep in mind that you might be negatively impacting an impressionable young person; or an underprivileged minority; or a total newbie. I hate the term "safe space" but we should all fight to keep HN as close to a Miltonian "marketplace of ideas" as possible.
- DC-3 8y agoYour arrogance was evident in your original comment, and as such, I felt no qualms about expressing my disapproval of your attitude towards shipping software. You're right - if you had come across less cocksure, I wouldn't have left a comment.
- vezycash 8y agoArrogance? I saw no such thing. Maybe jealousy about his attitude to projects. I introduced a friend of mine to programming. He picked up pyret and released a cool little game with it. Instead of the community encouraging him, they shit on his code. Called it ugly, and pointed out a lot of nothings. Consequently, the dude quit programming. He now considers it something the smart ones do. He agrees with me when I say those haters don't matter. But, the spark's dead. I'm not saying we shouldn't give feedback. But feedback is different from nagging, complaints and bullying. A good way to give feedback correctly is the sandwich method. Specific Praise -> specific critique-> specific praise.
- tomc1985 8y agoWell, if you call an app "tiny" old internet types are going to assume you mean "lightweight" and "efficient"
- chii 8y agoto be fair, most existing apps with that monika _are_ lightweight and efficient: tiny c compiler etc (https://tinyapps.org/ https://tinyapps.org/ for more).
- nomoel 8y agoYa should nae huv dun it wit Electron mate.
- megablast 8y agoHow are you releasing, but the products are not seeing the light of day?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- colonelpopcorn 8y agoNot being used actively maybe?
- Insanity 8y agoHow do you find motivation to continue working on a bunch of things that don't pan out? Most of a what I code in my free time is 'useless'. Project Euler and the like. When I think of building something and actually releasing it, my immediate impulse is that no one would use it so it'd be a waste of time. It bothers me a bit.
- imtringued 8y agoThose pesky users will come as soon as you release it.
- konschubert 8y agoIt’s not that simple. You need to have a market and also advertise. I released voiceaudiocheck.com a month ago and haven’t seen a single user.
- tedmcory77 8y agoWhat have you done to market it? Who is your primary user? What pain does it solve? How do they solve this pain without your service?
- konschubert 8y ago> What have you done to market it? Nothing, because... > Who is your primary user? What pain does it solve? I don't know :D I guess it helps them with the pain of sounding shitty on video calls, by telling them how to improve. I don't see a market for it at the moment because the problem it solves is so incremental.
- tren 8y agoI was actually looking for something similar to this recently. Very first thing you need to do is fix your title and description tags for SEO. Second, contact some sites where this product might be useful for their users.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- shaan7 8y ago> it's a whole bunch of angry people arguing about Electron sucking, about why the app is 100mb, about how C++ and Qt would be better FWIW, KDE Plasma already has something similar to Lofi that I use daily https://i.imgur.com/uVAnf7p.png https://i.imgur.com/uVAnf7p.png . Works out of the box :) Under the hood it uses MPRIS to talk to the Spotify Linux app. So it works with all native music players, and even YouTube running in your browser! https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/05/kde-plasma-5-13-features-upgrade https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/05/kde-plasma-5-13-features...
- blub 8y ago"But if you read most of the posts, it's a whole bunch of angry people arguing about Electron sucking, about why the app is 100mb, about how C++ and Qt would be better, etc. etc. The difference between me and those people? I'm already working on my next project ;)" This is a typical style of web app development that is rightfully criticized: the average web developer thinks it's okay to offload their performance problems on everyone else as long as they reach their personal or company goals. Pumping out many unsupported, mediocre projects isn't something to brag about either.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoWhy not? Nobody's forcing you to use them.
- diob 8y agoI think they mean that for the most part developers spend their time complaining instead of doing. In the end, someone can always rewrite something that's successful to fix performance issues, but what's the point of making something performant (or focusing heavily on architecture) before you even know people want your product? Performance matters to a degree (after all, performance is a feature), but the product matters the most.
- blub 8y agoThe point is professional pride and the "engineering" in software engineering. Which can admittedly get in the way of half-assing a start-up into life... and that's why many devs are not good business men. That's a feature, assuming we don't want all our sw to be complete crap.
- dwild 8y ago> the average web developer thinks it's okay to offload their performance problems on everyone else as long as they reach their personal or company goals. Why is it not okay? He solved his problems under his requirement, if it doesn't solve your problem under your requirement, it's not his fault and he isn't forced to follow your requirement. > Pumping out many unsupported, Why you consider that bad? He is learning, he is building, he is solving issues. The fact that he keep doing this is bad? I only see positive in that... I'm pretty sure it's supported as much as he need them to be. He is his only client. I'm pretty sure too that if anyone wanted theses projects to be supported, he would gladly accept to be hired by them with a compensation worth his time. I just saw that he was even generous enough to give his source code, with a MIT license on top of that! > mediocre projects That's just means and uncalled for. You should really think more over this issue you seems to have.
- iamgopal 8y agoAs Steve jobs said, ( that guy was genius regarding seeing understanding thing so completely that he can explained it in really simple terms ) , "Real Artist delivers"