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Some how I agree with the author. In the last decade I’ve known and worked with dozens of one-man tech startup founders, they basically fall into two categorie
by ccll 4y ago
Some how I agree with the author.
In the last decade I’ve known and worked with dozens of one-man tech startup founders, they basically fall into two categories, the ‘product’ group and the ‘engineer’ group.
The ‘product’ guys tend to use boring technology like PHP or Python to duct tape their product and ship it ASAP and pivot very quickly if things didn’t work out, they NEVER write a single test.
The ‘engineer’ guys tend to use bleeding edge technology like meteor/nextjs/svelt/cypress/terraform/k8s/nomad/netlify/cloudfunction/(insert a hundred tech here)/… and polish their product alot before launching, including writing a lot tests.
To be honest, the ‘product’ group are way more successful financially than the ‘engineer’ group in my small sample dataset.
I’m in the ‘engineer’ group myself, and I tend to polish a lot, lately I’ve been thinking about the two different mindsets, and I get to the same conclusion with the OP’s article, that code quality and maintenancibility are great ideas, but unfortunately *for a startup* they are not directly related with making money, at least not linearly directly related.
Startup is about exploring undiscovered market opportunities, and it’s full of uncertainties and assumptions, your job is to find out whether the assumptions are true or false, not to write the most stable and easy-to-refactor code.
Guess what? Tests are about certainty, about known rules. In week 1 you write lots of tests to cover your 80% business logic, and in week 2 you find out your original idea does not work and need to change course, and all the written tests are garbage now, then week 3 same thing happen again…and all your precious time are wasted chasing the wrong target.
One thing I disagree though is that you don’t need to be literally rich to begin writing tests, as soon as your business logic and model is proven, like making positive cash flow or user growth is promising, then it’s the right time to write some tests, to improve the code quality and your confidence of future refactoring.