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> This is not the optimal means to delivering a high-impact product. This is just a single data point, but for a view "from the other side", my honest and imme
by enriquto 5y ago
> This is not the optimal means to delivering a high-impact product.
This is just a single data point, but for a view "from the other side", my honest and immediate answer to this question is: "I don't care".
When writing programs, my concern has never been "to deliver a high-impact product". In fact, I find this language very annoying; and saying that my program is a "product" feels like a very offensive insult. The goal is never to deliver a product, much less a high impact product. The goal is always to solve a problem that I have, regardless of whether any other person on earth has the same problem. Now, I may have been given that problem because it was deemed useful to other people, but during the actual act of programming I prefer to make an abstraction of that and focus only on the problem itself.
EDIT: I appreciate that there are managers and such that keep proposing meaningful problems. I also like to find problems myself, and sometimes I appreciate when (rarely) they turn out to be shared with others, who in turn are happy that I solved them. But this is always a happy secondary effect, never the main goal.
- ttymck 5y agoI understand your viewpoint, but I feel like you are talking about something else entirely. GP discussed (paraphrasing): "building a product, trying to get customers", so to respond by saying "it's not a product, I don't want customers" isn't exactly continuing the discussion. For hobby projects, I agree with you whole-heartedly.
- hluska 5y agoThat’s the other side of the builder mindset. It’s relatively easy for builders to build things that solve their own problems. That’s a tool and builders like tools. It takes a really big mental leap to go from “I built a thing” to “I built a product.” The thing is, things are products. But the answer isn’t “all hackers are wrong, you’re dumb for not involving me early on.” Rather, the answer is ‘chill, you’ve got this.’
- hluska 5y agoThat’s the marketing mindset. Marketers are not builders and they are incapable of understanding why we build things. Sometimes we build something to solve a problem that we have. Sometimes we build something because we want to learn. Other times, we build things because we’re bored. We don’t need a product placement meeting before we type git -m commit “First commit” and if we did, the bast majority of cool things would never have been built. Sometimes we just build because that’s what builders do.
- mbreese 5y agoBut — the original post is about a developer who clearly is treating their project as a product. So, the top comment completely makes sense in that context.
- cortesoft 5y agoLook, I am a builder at heart, too. I love writing software for all sorts of reasons. When I am working for someone who is paying me, though, I am only building for one reason; to deliver value to my employer. That is the entire reason I am being paid. I build for other reasons at other times. I really hate working with other developers who think like you do. It is so hard to work with people who care more about the code itself than what it is for. We aren’t working for the same goal, and sometimes the beautiful code actually makes it harder to accomplish our actual goal.
- bvaldivielso 5y agoYour point is not against GP's point. It seems from your comment that you don't want to deliver a high-impact product, and that even the thought of your program as a "product" is offensive. Well, GP is not forcing you to work towards high-impact products. If you want to solve your own problems, then do, and follow whatever workflow you want.
- sulam 5y agoDo you work in research, or maybe open source?