9 ms·

> “Snaplight serves an extremely niche need: mine.” There is a subtle brilliance in this sentence. With this recognition comes the permission to not try adding

> “Snaplight serves an extremely niche need: mine.” There is a subtle brilliance in this sentence. With this recognition comes the permission to not try adding a mountain of features and complicating matters. Build something you will use. Solve a problem you have. Enjoy the process and accept the vulnerability that comes with shipping something to the world. Chances are good things will come of it.

rolltiide 7y ago
*Non-programmers need not apply
melling 7y ago
Yes, it’s an old proverb. “Necessity is the mother of invention” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_is_the_mother_of_invention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_is_the_mother_of_inv...
- SuperGent 7y ago
  Whenever I hear that I'm always reminded of my father saying 'We put a man on the moon before we put wheels on a suitcase'
  - gridspy 7y ago
    Perhaps wheels on a suitcase required modern plastics?
    - DocTomoe 7y ago
      ... because wheels necessitate plastic.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - Merrill 7y ago
      I think that the first wheeled suitcases used indoor roller skate wheels. So the parts were readily available for a long time before wheeled suitcases. But early airports didn't have miles of corridors and a hundred gates, so maybe the need wasn't as great.
    - danesparza 7y ago
      We had wheels on cars, baby strollers, and bikes before the moon landing. The cold war re-prioritized life for many Americans (and Russians, too I'm sure)
personjerry 7y ago
Chances are NOT good that things will come of it. There's a million useless projects for every one post like this. There's a lot more work than just building it.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  On the other hand, you do have to be in it to win it.
  - Vinnl 7y ago
    I think that's GP's point: do not publish it expecting it to lead to good things, because the chances are so good - they're not. Publish it because it solves a problem for you, and because it's little effort, so might as well. I do that a lot. Pretty much every one of them is used practically only by me. That's fine, because that was my expectation anyway.
lerxst00 7y ago
I recently had a similar experience: I watch a lot of YouTube videos and I like reading through the comments. Often, comments quote specific timestamps from the video and I would find it a pain to keep scrolling between the comment section at the bottom of the page and the video at the top and then find the specific time in the video that the comment was talking about. So, I created a Chrome extension that surfaces YouTube comments that have timestamps right below the video, around the time that the comment contains. And, then disappears it after a few seconds. It was fun to make and in the end, it solved a very specific problem that I was facing. Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-timed-comments/mfmjnhncafdcdegeiamnjpnjgmmkkaal https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-timed-comm...
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing. You’re definitely not the only person who has this issue. It’s definitely something YouTube could implement if they weren’t content with the minor tyre fix they’ve built.
  - lerxst00 7y ago
    You're welcome! The only issue I have now is that I've moved on to using Firefox. So, I can't really use this extension anymore. I guess that sounds like another 'niche problem' that needs solving.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      You wouldn’t be alone there either.
    - CalRobert 7y ago
      This Firefox user would love a port...
    - hellweaver666 7y ago
      Chrome extensions are quite trivial to port to Firefox these days. One of my colleagues built a chrome extension and had the firefox version working minutes later.
rohan1024 7y ago
That's what Bhagvad Gita says as well. Please note these are not the exact words but this is how I remember them कर्म करो फल की अपेक्षा मत करो जब तुम फल की अपेक्षा रखोगे तुम्हारा कर्म दूषित होगा Translation: Do your work, don't expect anything in return. Because when you do, your work gets corrupt.
- kranner 7y ago
  > Do your work, don't expect anything in return. Because when you do, your work gets corrupt. This translation doesn't seem to cover the familiar, deeper meaning of the passage. The term कर्म (karma) can refer both to work/action as well as to the principle of cause and effect (that the word 'karma' more commonly represents). My understanding is that it really talks about the purifying effect on the mind of doing your duty without expectations of being rewarded. A bit like Bushido. This is not duty in the sense of solving your own problems and taking risks as an entrepreneur. It is more about doing the job that society (the very rigid caste-based society that is the context here) has laid out for you. The subject of the speech was Arjuna. Krishna, the speaker, was reminding Arjuna that being born a warrior it was his duty to fight in the war that he didn't want to fight in, even if it meant slaughtering his cousins who were on the opposing side. Seen in its original context, it doesn't quite mean the same thing as what GP said.
  - rohan1024 7y ago
    I came up with translation. Duty is the better word instead of work.
  - jrochkind1 7y ago
    I got the implication of "do your duty without expectation of reward", and implications of cause/effect from rohan1024's off-the-cuff translation already. But maybe I didn't get the implication of "job that rigid-caste-based society set out for you". Which of course probably seems less sensible/ethical to many of us modern people. One of the things that has made the religious texts that have been treasured for thousands of years succesful is how they have such expanding/multitudinous possibilities of interpretation and directions of symbolism. And they usually have been understood differently by different people at different times (as a historical fact, even if the fundamentalists want to argue otherwise). I find that a very interesting and thought-provoking passage, that has resonances with things in other religious/spiritual traditions (unsurprisingly especially some kinds of Buddhism), but I have no interest in the "your duty is exactly what 'society' tells you it is" part. I think we have a duty to ourselves/our neighbors/humanity/god/the divine, and expecting something in return will corrupt it (and possibly ruin the outcome), but it might not be quite what 'society' is telling you it is.
papito 7y ago
Something something eat your own dogfood.
- FigmentEngine 7y ago
  drink your own champagne works..
  - papito 7y ago
    No no - that's in startups coasting on VC money. In places trying to actually get something done - it's dog food :)
Allower 7y ago
Guess Im a shitty developer cuz i tried this and failed, many, many, many times. I wont use anything I build because 1) its very limited, 2) i have to maintain it, 3) it takes forever to actually make anything (for me)
finnthehuman 7y ago
>With this recognition comes the permission to not try adding a mountain of features and complicating matters. Well, yeah. The only thing that’s surprising about this is that the opposite has gotten so engrained. We are so accustomed to an attitude that (without the niceties of professionalism) is basically “who the fuck are you, nerd, to have the audacity to think you understand user needs? You’re weird and nobody wants what you want from software.”
thanatropism 7y ago
Isn't that the whole world of one-off github repos though? Here's my world-famous Python tool for Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis of Excel sheets depending on expert estimates: https://github.com/asemic-horizon/stanton https://github.com/asemic-horizon/stanton And my extremely unrequested extension for expert estimates that may be correlated: https://github.com/asemic-horizon/multibeta https://github.com/asemic-horizon/multibeta
m463 7y ago
I wonder about this... The Tesla model 3 has no dashboard in your line of sight, and Elon Musk says he builds something he likes and hope others will too. But the car has sold well in spite of the fact that many owners I've talked to said this was a big compromise for them.

rolltiide 7y ago

*Non-programmers need not apply

melling 7y ago

Yes, it’s an old proverb. “Necessity is the mother of invention” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_is_the_mother_of_invention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_is_the_mother_of_inv...

SuperGent 7y ago
Whenever I hear that I'm always reminded of my father saying 'We put a man on the moon before we put wheels on a suitcase'
- gridspy 7y ago
  Perhaps wheels on a suitcase required modern plastics?
  - DocTomoe 7y ago
    ... because wheels necessitate plastic.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - Merrill 7y ago
    I think that the first wheeled suitcases used indoor roller skate wheels. So the parts were readily available for a long time before wheeled suitcases. But early airports didn't have miles of corridors and a hundred gates, so maybe the need wasn't as great.
  - danesparza 7y ago
    We had wheels on cars, baby strollers, and bikes before the moon landing. The cold war re-prioritized life for many Americans (and Russians, too I'm sure)

personjerry 7y ago

Chances are NOT good that things will come of it. There's a million useless projects for every one post like this. There's a lot more work than just building it.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
On the other hand, you do have to be in it to win it.
- Vinnl 7y ago
  I think that's GP's point: do not publish it expecting it to lead to good things, because the chances are so good - they're not. Publish it because it solves a problem for you, and because it's little effort, so might as well. I do that a lot. Pretty much every one of them is used practically only by me. That's fine, because that was my expectation anyway.

lerxst00 7y ago

I recently had a similar experience: I watch a lot of YouTube videos and I like reading through the comments. Often, comments quote specific timestamps from the video and I would find it a pain to keep scrolling between the comment section at the bottom of the page and the video at the top and then find the specific time in the video that the comment was talking about. So, I created a Chrome extension that surfaces YouTube comments that have timestamps right below the video, around the time that the comment contains. And, then disappears it after a few seconds. It was fun to make and in the end, it solved a very specific problem that I was facing. Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-timed-comments/mfmjnhncafdcdegeiamnjpnjgmmkkaal https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-timed-comm...

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Thanks for sharing. You’re definitely not the only person who has this issue. It’s definitely something YouTube could implement if they weren’t content with the minor tyre fix they’ve built.
- lerxst00 7y ago
  You're welcome! The only issue I have now is that I've moved on to using Firefox. So, I can't really use this extension anymore. I guess that sounds like another 'niche problem' that needs solving.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    You wouldn’t be alone there either.
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    This Firefox user would love a port...
  - hellweaver666 7y ago
    Chrome extensions are quite trivial to port to Firefox these days. One of my colleagues built a chrome extension and had the firefox version working minutes later.

rohan1024 7y ago

That's what Bhagvad Gita says as well. Please note these are not the exact words but this is how I remember them कर्म करो फल की अपेक्षा मत करो जब तुम फल की अपेक्षा रखोगे तुम्हारा कर्म दूषित होगा Translation: Do your work, don't expect anything in return. Because when you do, your work gets corrupt.

kranner 7y ago
> Do your work, don't expect anything in return. Because when you do, your work gets corrupt. This translation doesn't seem to cover the familiar, deeper meaning of the passage. The term कर्म (karma) can refer both to work/action as well as to the principle of cause and effect (that the word 'karma' more commonly represents). My understanding is that it really talks about the purifying effect on the mind of doing your duty without expectations of being rewarded. A bit like Bushido. This is not duty in the sense of solving your own problems and taking risks as an entrepreneur. It is more about doing the job that society (the very rigid caste-based society that is the context here) has laid out for you. The subject of the speech was Arjuna. Krishna, the speaker, was reminding Arjuna that being born a warrior it was his duty to fight in the war that he didn't want to fight in, even if it meant slaughtering his cousins who were on the opposing side. Seen in its original context, it doesn't quite mean the same thing as what GP said.
- rohan1024 7y ago
  I came up with translation. Duty is the better word instead of work.
- jrochkind1 7y ago
  I got the implication of "do your duty without expectation of reward", and implications of cause/effect from rohan1024's off-the-cuff translation already. But maybe I didn't get the implication of "job that rigid-caste-based society set out for you". Which of course probably seems less sensible/ethical to many of us modern people. One of the things that has made the religious texts that have been treasured for thousands of years succesful is how they have such expanding/multitudinous possibilities of interpretation and directions of symbolism. And they usually have been understood differently by different people at different times (as a historical fact, even if the fundamentalists want to argue otherwise). I find that a very interesting and thought-provoking passage, that has resonances with things in other religious/spiritual traditions (unsurprisingly especially some kinds of Buddhism), but I have no interest in the "your duty is exactly what 'society' tells you it is" part. I think we have a duty to ourselves/our neighbors/humanity/god/the divine, and expecting something in return will corrupt it (and possibly ruin the outcome), but it might not be quite what 'society' is telling you it is.

papito 7y ago

Something something eat your own dogfood.

FigmentEngine 7y ago
drink your own champagne works..
- papito 7y ago
  No no - that's in startups coasting on VC money. In places trying to actually get something done - it's dog food :)

Allower 7y ago

Guess Im a shitty developer cuz i tried this and failed, many, many, many times. I wont use anything I build because 1) its very limited, 2) i have to maintain it, 3) it takes forever to actually make anything (for me)

finnthehuman 7y ago

>With this recognition comes the permission to not try adding a mountain of features and complicating matters. Well, yeah. The only thing that’s surprising about this is that the opposite has gotten so engrained. We are so accustomed to an attitude that (without the niceties of professionalism) is basically “who the fuck are you, nerd, to have the audacity to think you understand user needs? You’re weird and nobody wants what you want from software.”

thanatropism 7y ago

Isn't that the whole world of one-off github repos though? Here's my world-famous Python tool for Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis of Excel sheets depending on expert estimates: https://github.com/asemic-horizon/stanton https://github.com/asemic-horizon/stanton And my extremely unrequested extension for expert estimates that may be correlated: https://github.com/asemic-horizon/multibeta https://github.com/asemic-horizon/multibeta

m463 7y ago

I wonder about this... The Tesla model 3 has no dashboard in your line of sight, and Elon Musk says he builds something he likes and hope others will too. But the car has sold well in spite of the fact that many owners I've talked to said this was a big compromise for them.