6 ms·
Aaron Swartz: Sweating the Small Stuff
- brett 19y agoHow did you manage to post the reddit redirect link? I wonder if reddit still logs it as a click through when they are not the referrer.
- rms 19y agoHe saw this post in his recommended links on Reddit and he right clicked, copied, and submitted here without hesitating.
- mattculbreth 19y agoDamn, correct. Didn't even notice I did that.
- aston 19y agoJottit may end up being the classic example of why striving for perfect code is a bad idea. Half a year on a textarea... I hope it turns out to be awesome.
- palish 19y agoThere's a hidden advantage. When he's done, he's done. He doesn't need to spend any more time on it once it's basically perfect. But its function will last as long as there's a server to host it. So if his next project turns out to be that way, then ten projects thereafter, pretty soon he's made a suite of applications that a large number of people find useful.
- edw519 19y agoI once did a post-mortem on 700 IT software requests over an 18 month period. I came to the conclusion that 95% of them were to change THAT WHICH SHOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN RELEASED. In other words, 10 programmers were kept busy in a $100 million company FIXING THEIR OWN BUGS. The business wasn't changing so much to require them; their own incomplete work made them necessary. Sure, you can work on perfect so hard that you never release anything. OTOH, there's a lot to be said for high quality work.
- davidw 19y agoOn the other hand, the history of computer products is littered with "perfect" systems that lost out to good systems released earlier, and accomplishing most of what people want.
- JulianMorrison 19y agoUsually there was some other complicating factor, like massive over-charging. Meanwhile better systems have come from behind (Word beats the entrenched but poorly ported Wordperfect at the DOS/Windows changeover).
- webwright 19y agoOn one hand I think there are kudos to give for bucking the irrationally extreme "release early, release often" trends that seems to abound. I've seen a lot of bad software released under this banner. On the other hand, that's an awful long time for the features I see in a really crowded market.
- palish 19y agoThere's a guy posing as PG in the comments. It's pretty malicious too, because when you click on "PG" it sends you to a web archive of Paul's Infogami blog. I'm amazed at how much time people devote to making other people look bad.
- rms 19y agoSome people just suck. I wonder if it's one of the guys who submit malware here.
- dfranke 19y agoMalware? I haven't seen that, or at least haven't identified it as such, and I have showdead turned on. What are you referring to?
- rms 19y agoA guy submits tv by demand links that try and get you to run a javascript function or an .msi (scariest extension imaginable) to let you watch videos online. If you search for tvbydemand malware, it gets you to that guys site where he reposts press releases about OTHER malware. Shady as hell.
- dfranke 19y agoAh, ok. I've seen lots of those. I didn't realize they were malware, just spam.
- jojo 19y agoTVByDemand does not now or has it ever had Malware associated with it. Nothing in the link forces anyone to do anything. The only .msi is from Unreal Media which is the free media server that is used for our videos. The links go to our forums which have NOTHING to do with the video section of the site.
- mitch 19y agoIf you guys had any sense at all you would see that what is being installed is from http://www.umediaserver.net http://www.umediaserver.net and is a legitimate video player certified by microsoft. There is no malware in it at all. What TVByDemand authors are tyring to do is give you guys free videos of local events in the philly and NJ area and provide you with news pertaining to almost every topic that means anything for free with no annoying ads or anything that lines thier pockets. It is truely one of the last FREE sites that doesn't try to take over your computer or use your personal information. Before you call something "shady" try doing at least the tiniest bit of research.
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- Readmore 19y agoThat looks alot like the idea behind my site scrapages. Although I built that in about 2 weeks.
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- axod 19y agoTalking up the complexity just doesn't cut it for me with this. It's a simple little thing. No way are there "500 different things to do". Maybe 500 lines of code :)
- waleedka 19y agoYou'll be surprised. As you approach "perfect", the number of details for any given task increases exponentially. That's why perfect is unattainable.
- staunch 19y agoThis post seems like a pretty transparent attempt to justify his procrastination. It's a really easy trap to fall into. Actually releasing to the public is like selecting the "Hurt Me Plenty" option in Doom, it's not an easy thing to do. My partner and I took turns emailing this quote to each other as a reminder to keep ourselves intellectually honest: "Perhaps the most important reason to release early, though, is that it makes you work harder. When you're working on something that isn't released, problems are intriguing. In something that's out there, problems are alarming. There is a lot more urgency once you release. And I think that's precisely why people put it off. They know they'll have to work a lot harder once they do." -- Hardest Lessons #1