3 ms·

If it's been tried before, you should absolutely care. The successes or failures of those that have tried or done it before should be your first lessons and th

If it's been tried before, you should absolutely care. The successes or failures of those that have tried or done it before should be your first lessons and they should inform your decisions (probably not define, but definitely inform). No, "it's been tried before" doesn't automatically mean "it won't work." But if it didn't, finding out as much as possible about why it didn't work is your best chance at avoiding mistakes that have also already been made.

chacham15 14y ago
Its not just about working or not. E.g. yahoo vs google. They both work, just google works better. Myspace worked too, just facebook worked better. Even in the cases where things have failed in the past, it can be difficult to figure out why. Do you think that the iPhone was the first smartphone?
- kristopolous 14y ago
  Reminds me of Youtube. On-demand video was the "flying car" of Silicon Valley before them. And what about Skype? The notion of a usable video-phone was pure fantasy for years prior to them. And now, Tesla is doing this again. I can walk into my grocery store, use their smart-phone app to get discounts on things I want to buy and then wave my phone at the self-checkout station to pay for it all. What a nice future. Reminds me of these commercials: http://ThisWillTake.Me/youtube/ATT_You_Will http://ThisWillTake.Me/youtube/ATT_You_Will . They seem so quaint now.
  - chacham15 14y ago
    I dont understand what point you are trying to make and how that may relate to what I said. Are you trying to state that new things are invented? If so, I think you missed my point which was that determining why things work now can also be a difficult question.
    - kristopolous 14y ago
      I wasn't being combative. Just adding to your examples. There's countless things that people tried for decades and nobody succeeded in that are now ubiquitous. It's easy to justify being dismissive of people trying things that have yet to succeed by this argument. But it's also, clearly not valid. For instance, with the rise of cloud storage and web-applications, we are doing, essentially, thin client computing now - something that people said would never come. Self-driving cars were another constant future-device (e.g., http://ThisWillTake.Me/youtube/Johnny_cab_clips_from_total_recall http://ThisWillTake.Me/youtube/Johnny_cab_clips_from_total_r...). And now it looks like we'll get them by the end of the decade. That's pretty impressive.
      - EternalFury 14y ago
        Thin clients, a.k.a. "dumb terminals" with a prettier UI. (not more functional, quick or useful, but awesomely prettier) From a software standpoint, there are now 2 categories: 1) Software as a service 2) Software as an end product "1)" is more honest, because your customers only care about the service and you have nothing to gain by churning and regurgitating new-old-new-again ideas every 10 years in order to keep scoring new license deals. "2)", well, I said it already: As a software vendor, you have no financial interest in selling anything that won't need to be replaced at least once a year. Hence, the constant renaming of recurring concepts over and over and over...in order to keep license revenues coming in.
        nitrogen 14y ago
        It's interesting that you describe SaaS as more "honest"; it's like describing the loan shark in the back alley as more "honest" because he admits up front that he's charging an arm and a leg (perhaps literally) to borrow some money. Though I use many SaaS offerings, I still prefer installable software as much as possible because once I own it, I own it forever. For example, Windows XP may reach EOL next year, but existing, activated copies aren't magically going to go away at that time.
      - nitrogen 14y ago

chacham15 14y ago

Its not just about working or not. E.g. yahoo vs google. They both work, just google works better. Myspace worked too, just facebook worked better. Even in the cases where things have failed in the past, it can be difficult to figure out why. Do you think that the iPhone was the first smartphone?

kristopolous 14y ago
Reminds me of Youtube. On-demand video was the "flying car" of Silicon Valley before them. And what about Skype? The notion of a usable video-phone was pure fantasy for years prior to them. And now, Tesla is doing this again. I can walk into my grocery store, use their smart-phone app to get discounts on things I want to buy and then wave my phone at the self-checkout station to pay for it all. What a nice future. Reminds me of these commercials: http://ThisWillTake.Me/youtube/ATT_You_Will http://ThisWillTake.Me/youtube/ATT_You_Will . They seem so quaint now.
- chacham15 14y ago
  I dont understand what point you are trying to make and how that may relate to what I said. Are you trying to state that new things are invented? If so, I think you missed my point which was that determining why things work now can also be a difficult question.
  - kristopolous 14y ago
    I wasn't being combative. Just adding to your examples. There's countless things that people tried for decades and nobody succeeded in that are now ubiquitous. It's easy to justify being dismissive of people trying things that have yet to succeed by this argument. But it's also, clearly not valid. For instance, with the rise of cloud storage and web-applications, we are doing, essentially, thin client computing now - something that people said would never come. Self-driving cars were another constant future-device (e.g., http://ThisWillTake.Me/youtube/Johnny_cab_clips_from_total_recall http://ThisWillTake.Me/youtube/Johnny_cab_clips_from_total_r...). And now it looks like we'll get them by the end of the decade. That's pretty impressive.
    - EternalFury 14y ago
      Thin clients, a.k.a. "dumb terminals" with a prettier UI. (not more functional, quick or useful, but awesomely prettier) From a software standpoint, there are now 2 categories: 1) Software as a service 2) Software as an end product "1)" is more honest, because your customers only care about the service and you have nothing to gain by churning and regurgitating new-old-new-again ideas every 10 years in order to keep scoring new license deals. "2)", well, I said it already: As a software vendor, you have no financial interest in selling anything that won't need to be replaced at least once a year. Hence, the constant renaming of recurring concepts over and over and over...in order to keep license revenues coming in.
      - nitrogen 14y ago
        It's interesting that you describe SaaS as more "honest"; it's like describing the loan shark in the back alley as more "honest" because he admits up front that he's charging an arm and a leg (perhaps literally) to borrow some money. Though I use many SaaS offerings, I still prefer installable software as much as possible because once I own it, I own it forever. For example, Windows XP may reach EOL next year, but existing, activated copies aren't magically going to go away at that time.
    - nitrogen 14y ago