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I think you have the wrong takeaway from this thread. The project marketing is terrible, it is confusing, lacks focus, makes senseless claims, and doesn't showc

I think you have the wrong takeaway from this thread. The project marketing is terrible, it is confusing, lacks focus, makes senseless claims, and doesn't showcase the project's strong points. People are telling the author where his marketing is falling short, and the developer has already updated his marketing in a few places to make it better. What you're watching is improvement in real-time.

ModernMech 5y ago
I have the opposite impression as you. Honestly, you're one of the only people in this thread who engaged with the author in a respectful way, and I thank you for that. I agree with you that the author needs to do some work on the marketing side, and the helpful pointers provided here by you and others will hopefully move him in that direction. Still, there are others in this thread who should be ashamed of themselves. We have people implying the author is childish, outright calling him disrespectful, calling his project a joke and a parody... it's all really quite sad. I mean, here you have a guy who has put years of work into a project, who embodies the hacker ethos, and a community of self-described hackers can't push past his lack of marketing ability to engage with the technical merits of this diamond in the rough. Set the marketing on the main page aside, and you have a 136 page technical reference (linked helpfully on the front page) that contains a lot of great info. Yet the closest anyone came to engaging with it here was to complain that it's a PDF. I think this twitter thread had it right about the community here: https://twitter.com/rikarends/status/1382759991162068995 https://twitter.com/rikarends/status/1382759991162068995 Which baffles me to some degree. You'd think this community, of all communities, would be welcoming and inquisitive when confronted with strange new ideas, despite bad marketing. The community is not just technically focused, but built around a startup incubator whose founder warned of this exact dynamic! And yet all we seem to get is superficial discussion related to marketing.
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  So at risk of being the exact type of crusty old guy the tweeter is complaining about, I think Rik is completely missing the point. Progammers are busy, and not just with work but with learning. Somebody said its a 60hr/wk job, 40hrs for your boss and 20hrs just keeping up with technology, and while probably a bit facitious most weeks it feels that way. So not only are we keeping up with the platforms we're working on, we're also trying to keep an eye on what technology is on the horizon, or even other technology that exists and is usable today that we probably should know about. Rik sounds like somebody who applies for 100 jobs and complains why companies never give him feedback without realizing that each of those jobs is getting 100s of applications and replying to them all is not remotely possible. Then further, his market is developers who have been around awhile and seen some shit. This is an industry where everything old is new again; the reason people have a knee-jerk reaction to projects like Beads and Makepad is because we've seen things that look similar, probably used them ourselves, and been burned by them. People working on projects like this, when they are marketing to experienced developers, should try and place the project in the context of the history of similar projects and explain why this time they have it right. Lastly, it doesn't matter if your project is asking for money or asking for developer attention, insulting your target market is never the right play. Startups spend massive energy honing and refining their marketing message, they don't expect potential customers to just magically get-it. Projects who want developer attention should view their marketing with the same importance. And if a project, just like a product, does not take their marketing seriously, I'm less inclined to take them seriously unless they are very clearly and obviously solving one of my immediate problems at which point I don't care if their marketing is a plain text document.

ModernMech 5y ago

I have the opposite impression as you. Honestly, you're one of the only people in this thread who engaged with the author in a respectful way, and I thank you for that. I agree with you that the author needs to do some work on the marketing side, and the helpful pointers provided here by you and others will hopefully move him in that direction. Still, there are others in this thread who should be ashamed of themselves. We have people implying the author is childish, outright calling him disrespectful, calling his project a joke and a parody... it's all really quite sad. I mean, here you have a guy who has put years of work into a project, who embodies the hacker ethos, and a community of self-described hackers can't push past his lack of marketing ability to engage with the technical merits of this diamond in the rough. Set the marketing on the main page aside, and you have a 136 page technical reference (linked helpfully on the front page) that contains a lot of great info. Yet the closest anyone came to engaging with it here was to complain that it's a PDF. I think this twitter thread had it right about the community here: https://twitter.com/rikarends/status/1382759991162068995 https://twitter.com/rikarends/status/1382759991162068995 Which baffles me to some degree. You'd think this community, of all communities, would be welcoming and inquisitive when confronted with strange new ideas, despite bad marketing. The community is not just technically focused, but built around a startup incubator whose founder warned of this exact dynamic! And yet all we seem to get is superficial discussion related to marketing.

blacktriangle 5y ago
So at risk of being the exact type of crusty old guy the tweeter is complaining about, I think Rik is completely missing the point. Progammers are busy, and not just with work but with learning. Somebody said its a 60hr/wk job, 40hrs for your boss and 20hrs just keeping up with technology, and while probably a bit facitious most weeks it feels that way. So not only are we keeping up with the platforms we're working on, we're also trying to keep an eye on what technology is on the horizon, or even other technology that exists and is usable today that we probably should know about. Rik sounds like somebody who applies for 100 jobs and complains why companies never give him feedback without realizing that each of those jobs is getting 100s of applications and replying to them all is not remotely possible. Then further, his market is developers who have been around awhile and seen some shit. This is an industry where everything old is new again; the reason people have a knee-jerk reaction to projects like Beads and Makepad is because we've seen things that look similar, probably used them ourselves, and been burned by them. People working on projects like this, when they are marketing to experienced developers, should try and place the project in the context of the history of similar projects and explain why this time they have it right. Lastly, it doesn't matter if your project is asking for money or asking for developer attention, insulting your target market is never the right play. Startups spend massive energy honing and refining their marketing message, they don't expect potential customers to just magically get-it. Projects who want developer attention should view their marketing with the same importance. And if a project, just like a product, does not take their marketing seriously, I'm less inclined to take them seriously unless they are very clearly and obviously solving one of my immediate problems at which point I don't care if their marketing is a plain text document.