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I remember, when I was just starting, the founder of the company saying that if you tell him you're offering an 'engine' that's mostly saying you don't have an
by twotwotwo 2y ago
I remember, when I was just starting, the founder of the company saying that if you tell him you're offering an 'engine' that's mostly saying you don't have an app. Of course, some successfully sell 'engines', but I think there's a basic truth that you need users to make your business work and make what you're building better and battle-hardened, and to get those users you usually have to be providing just what someone's looking for, and that often means making an app.
Some 'frameworks' or 'engines' budded off from work on a concrete problem, e.g. Django first for a specific CMS, Rails from Basecamp, Unreal Engine from Unreal the game. Work's not as much of an 'engine' as those are, but it's definitely turned out a big focus is on how customers can build their own stuff (both in the frontend and the data side) and integration. But for anyone to care about all that it has to be an app first!
- resonious 2y agoI've also noticed this. Seems rare to find successful frameworks that were actually built out as a framework from the start.
- EGreg 2y agoHere are two that I worked on for 10 and 5 years, respectively: https://Qbix.com/platform https://Qbix.com/platform https://Intercoin.org/applications https://Intercoin.org/applications Maybe I was just a crazy socialist LOL Here is the why: https://intercoin.org/community.pdf https://intercoin.org/community.pdf https://intercoin.org/IntercoinSolutions.pdf https://intercoin.org/IntercoinSolutions.pdf
- lelanthran 2y agoYou think those are successful?
- dkersten 2y agoGiven that this is the first time I’ve ever heard of either of those, I think the point stands.
- immibis 2y agoSee also the rule of three (repetitions before you extract a function, and clients before you extract a library)
- HPsquared 2y agoHaving a real product is a costly signal (i.e. a genuine one) that the developers are doing enough dogfooding.