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Seems to be this article is about when your product is bleeding-edge tech, but people are commenting as if it were about building your product using bleeding-ed

Seems to be this article is about when your product is bleeding-edge tech, but people are commenting as if it were about building your product using bleeding-edge tech (in-house or otherwise). Definitely only do one of these at a time, tho :)

rrrhys 6y ago
Yes, the article is exclusively about the trade-offs when building bleeding-edge products, like how impossibly hard it is to sell in to customers who have no idea what the product is or why it exists. All of the comments for some reason are about not using latest-nosql-db-from-producthunt in prod.
- sgtnoodle 6y ago
  I think the latter topic is generally more fun to commiserate about than the former. I have empathy for anyone that ernestly tries something ambitious and fails, and I'm glad the author found insight from the experience. Reading the article though, it sounds like the startup didn't really have a clear direction or momentum, tried to fix it by pivot ing to something technically "cool" without any business plan or realistic customer stories in mind, and then ultimately failed to create a sustainable business from that technology. A good lesson to learn from others rather than first hand, but not great subject matter to light heartedly banter about!
meowface 6y ago
Yeah, it's kind of like the classic "break one law at a time" rule. If you're hauling drugs, don't speed. Getting away with just the one thing is hard enough. I think Discord is one good example of this sort of trade-off. Single, pretty standard type of app that improves on its predecessors, with some bleeding-edge engineering: https://blog.discord.com/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to-rust-a190bbca2b1f https://blog.discord.com/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to... >Discord has never been afraid of embracing new technologies that look promising. For example, we were early adopters of Elixir, React, React Native, and Scylla. If a piece of technology is promising and gives us an advantage, we do not mind dealing with the inherent difficulties and instability of the bleeding edge. This is one of the ways we’ve quickly reached 250+ million users with less than 50 engineers. >Embracing the new async features in Rust nightly is another example of our willingness to embrace new, promising technology. As an engineering team, we decided it was worth using nightly Rust and we committed to running on nightly until async was fully supported on stable. Together we dealt with any problems that arose and at this point Rust stable supports asynchronous Rust. The bet paid off. (They also mention how they're careful to replace decoupled components incrementally, and only where it addresses a real need, rather than for the fun of it.)
- hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago
  > Yeah, it's kind of like the classic "break one law at a time" rule. If you're hauling drugs, don't speed. Getting away with just the one thing is hard enough. I wonder if not speeding is enough to give police officers a reason to make a drugs search in some places.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    Lol. Czech here, I was stopped by the police once in the night on an empty 4-lane road doing exactly the speed limit. They breathalyzed me, looked at the zero and one of them said: "you know, when someone keeps the limit at midnight on this stretch of the road, they are usually drunk".
    - antonvs 6y ago
      Next time a cop stops you for speeding, just explain, "I was speeding so you wouldn't be worried that I was drunk."
    - sharemywin 6y ago
      and you said: Why would I drink when I have 50 Kilos of coke in the trunk that would be stupid.
- holler 6y ago
  What problem was Discord solving when they launched? Twitch already existed, Slack existed. Asking because it's a similar question I'm asking myself as I build https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im, a news-focused public messaging app. I chose to use "bleeding edge tech", and have been challenged by peers about whether it would have been wiser to just use some off-the-shelf solution for parts of it vs architecting a fully custom a-z platform. I guess it depends. I don't see a site like Discord or Sqwok having a chance without a certain threshold of engineering to support the early product. That said, there's always the chance it doesn't matter because it's not solving a pain point for users. Sometimes it feels hard to answer without a tangible product to show.
staysaasy 6y ago
Agreed. We wrote about this and described it as having a well-balanced portfolio of technology. https://staysaasy.com/engineering/2020/05/30/Picking-Your-Tech-Stack.html https://staysaasy.com/engineering/2020/05/30/Picking-Your-Te...

rrrhys 6y ago

Yes, the article is exclusively about the trade-offs when building bleeding-edge products, like how impossibly hard it is to sell in to customers who have no idea what the product is or why it exists. All of the comments for some reason are about not using latest-nosql-db-from-producthunt in prod.

sgtnoodle 6y ago
I think the latter topic is generally more fun to commiserate about than the former. I have empathy for anyone that ernestly tries something ambitious and fails, and I'm glad the author found insight from the experience. Reading the article though, it sounds like the startup didn't really have a clear direction or momentum, tried to fix it by pivot ing to something technically "cool" without any business plan or realistic customer stories in mind, and then ultimately failed to create a sustainable business from that technology. A good lesson to learn from others rather than first hand, but not great subject matter to light heartedly banter about!

meowface 6y ago

Yeah, it's kind of like the classic "break one law at a time" rule. If you're hauling drugs, don't speed. Getting away with just the one thing is hard enough. I think Discord is one good example of this sort of trade-off. Single, pretty standard type of app that improves on its predecessors, with some bleeding-edge engineering: https://blog.discord.com/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to-rust-a190bbca2b1f https://blog.discord.com/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to... >Discord has never been afraid of embracing new technologies that look promising. For example, we were early adopters of Elixir, React, React Native, and Scylla. If a piece of technology is promising and gives us an advantage, we do not mind dealing with the inherent difficulties and instability of the bleeding edge. This is one of the ways we’ve quickly reached 250+ million users with less than 50 engineers. >Embracing the new async features in Rust nightly is another example of our willingness to embrace new, promising technology. As an engineering team, we decided it was worth using nightly Rust and we committed to running on nightly until async was fully supported on stable. Together we dealt with any problems that arose and at this point Rust stable supports asynchronous Rust. The bet paid off. (They also mention how they're careful to replace decoupled components incrementally, and only where it addresses a real need, rather than for the fun of it.)

hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago
> Yeah, it's kind of like the classic "break one law at a time" rule. If you're hauling drugs, don't speed. Getting away with just the one thing is hard enough. I wonder if not speeding is enough to give police officers a reason to make a drugs search in some places.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  Lol. Czech here, I was stopped by the police once in the night on an empty 4-lane road doing exactly the speed limit. They breathalyzed me, looked at the zero and one of them said: "you know, when someone keeps the limit at midnight on this stretch of the road, they are usually drunk".
  - antonvs 6y ago
    Next time a cop stops you for speeding, just explain, "I was speeding so you wouldn't be worried that I was drunk."
  - sharemywin 6y ago
    and you said: Why would I drink when I have 50 Kilos of coke in the trunk that would be stupid.
holler 6y ago
What problem was Discord solving when they launched? Twitch already existed, Slack existed. Asking because it's a similar question I'm asking myself as I build https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im, a news-focused public messaging app. I chose to use "bleeding edge tech", and have been challenged by peers about whether it would have been wiser to just use some off-the-shelf solution for parts of it vs architecting a fully custom a-z platform. I guess it depends. I don't see a site like Discord or Sqwok having a chance without a certain threshold of engineering to support the early product. That said, there's always the chance it doesn't matter because it's not solving a pain point for users. Sometimes it feels hard to answer without a tangible product to show.

staysaasy 6y ago

Agreed. We wrote about this and described it as having a well-balanced portfolio of technology. https://staysaasy.com/engineering/2020/05/30/Picking-Your-Tech-Stack.html https://staysaasy.com/engineering/2020/05/30/Picking-Your-Te...