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Perhaps the largest cause of wasted programming time is building things based on what sounds plausibly useful rather than what is actually useful. It's not an e
by apitman 2y ago
Perhaps the largest cause of wasted programming time is building things based on what sounds plausibly useful rather than what is actually useful. It's not an easy question to answer, but it needs to be asked constantly to avoid the trap.
Many of us have had the experience of spending an entire weekend feverishly hacking on something that was going to change the world, only to have someone point out a critical flaw in our assumptions as soon as they try it.
This is why scratching your own itch is so effective. If you make something that you actually use every day, you might be on to something. Going from 0 to 1 users is the hardest step.
- hnthrow90348765 2y agoIt's why you get user feedback before it goes into development. Then the developers don't have to question/gamble whether things are good for the users. If you can't answer that with evidence, then you are guessing at what users might want, which can definitely be a large gamble if you are a solo developer. User opinions count as evidence in this case, and guessing is sometimes correct in certain situations though. For some of us, we will not deeply use the industry-specific line-of-business things we've been asked to work on and won't have a good, calibrated opinion. In these situations, developers without the industry knowledge should get that validation before making those kinds of decisions.
- mcny 2y agoRelated reading (I would love to hear some feedback but I am NOT op) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42414911 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42414911 ---- Write code and experiment instead of talking and planning I want to have a chat with the computer in its own language right from the start. "But your attempts will lead you on so many fruitless avenues!" the committee heads admonish me. "You will waste so much time! Let's have a grand plan and write the perfect solution right from the start, ehh?"
- amatecha 2y agoYeah, in my experience, basically every time too much time is spent planning rather than doing, it has a huge cost in lost time that could have been better spent proving out the foundation of the idea which would immediately inform the next steps. I've seen it so frequently. I'd rather build a quick prototype we can iterate on and prove the concept. It keeps everyone/everything grounded in a tangible reality that speaks for itself and takes the guesswork out of building.