4 ms·

I'd love it if you'd write something about what you learned through that process, what you tried that didn't work and so on. It's pretty significant that you co

by gruseom 13y ago

I'd love it if you'd write something about what you learned through that process, what you tried that didn't work and so on. It's pretty significant that you couldn't make something good enough after two years and were driven all the way to Erlang. If that sounds skeptical, it isn't; I believe you, and that is what makes your remark enticing. I want to hear the story.

jacquesm 13y ago
The reason why I haven't written this up so far is that this is mixed up in a bunch of other stuff, some of which is quite painful to those involved and it is very hard to keep it generic enough that fingers won't be pointed. As these things go lots of money was blown, egos got frayed, potential customers were disappointed and time was wasted. All in all a huge learning experience but ultimately mostly a harsh lesson in not biting off more than you can chew and how not to run a project. I was involved as a coder rather than in any other capacity but some of the responsibility for the way the project was run surely rubs off on me. For one I should have probably thrown in the towel earlier when I realized in how many dimensions we were deficit. There wasn't a single point in time where I thought 'this is not the right way' other than right at the beginning, but once involved (originally just to fix 'a few bugs') I felt that I should give it my 200% to make it work. Over the course of 2 years mountains were moved but alas that wasn't enough, and funds ran out before we reached a version stable enough that we could run our application on it. In some ways we got pretty close, in others we were still miles away from completion (most notably, the network core and the actual app). Precious time was spent optimizing things that did not need optimization and most of the lessons start-ups learn were re-learned, sometimes (very unfortunately) against better judgement. I've been asked to look at salvaging this team/project/company and am working together with one of the founders to get things back on their feet in some form, so it is a very delicate situation. Let me talk it over with the rest of the guys involved and see if they are willing to let me write it up, I wouldn't do it without their buy-in. One potential snag here is that there is still some lingering hope we can re-boot this thing on an existing platform side-stepping the bulk of the development and just concentrating on the app portion (which was my initial preference anyway so I don't mind that).
- gruseom 13y ago
  That makes sense. I thought I was asking a technical question, but it's never purely technical, is it?
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    > I thought I was asking a technical question, but it's never purely technical, is it? Well, this one is technical in many ways and there really is an interesting angle there when you remove all the other stuff. That's still going to be a very harsh thing to see black-and-white in public rather than with context in private. The tech part essentially boils down to 'the right tool for the right job' and don't try to fit square pegs in round holes when you're on a deadline. The list of 'lessons learned' is rather longer than that ;)

by gruseom 13y ago

jacquesm 13y ago

The reason why I haven't written this up so far is that this is mixed up in a bunch of other stuff, some of which is quite painful to those involved and it is very hard to keep it generic enough that fingers won't be pointed. As these things go lots of money was blown, egos got frayed, potential customers were disappointed and time was wasted. All in all a huge learning experience but ultimately mostly a harsh lesson in not biting off more than you can chew and how not to run a project. I was involved as a coder rather than in any other capacity but some of the responsibility for the way the project was run surely rubs off on me. For one I should have probably thrown in the towel earlier when I realized in how many dimensions we were deficit. There wasn't a single point in time where I thought 'this is not the right way' other than right at the beginning, but once involved (originally just to fix 'a few bugs') I felt that I should give it my 200% to make it work. Over the course of 2 years mountains were moved but alas that wasn't enough, and funds ran out before we reached a version stable enough that we could run our application on it. In some ways we got pretty close, in others we were still miles away from completion (most notably, the network core and the actual app). Precious time was spent optimizing things that did not need optimization and most of the lessons start-ups learn were re-learned, sometimes (very unfortunately) against better judgement. I've been asked to look at salvaging this team/project/company and am working together with one of the founders to get things back on their feet in some form, so it is a very delicate situation. Let me talk it over with the rest of the guys involved and see if they are willing to let me write it up, I wouldn't do it without their buy-in. One potential snag here is that there is still some lingering hope we can re-boot this thing on an existing platform side-stepping the bulk of the development and just concentrating on the app portion (which was my initial preference anyway so I don't mind that).

gruseom 13y ago
That makes sense. I thought I was asking a technical question, but it's never purely technical, is it?
- jacquesm 13y ago
  > I thought I was asking a technical question, but it's never purely technical, is it? Well, this one is technical in many ways and there really is an interesting angle there when you remove all the other stuff. That's still going to be a very harsh thing to see black-and-white in public rather than with context in private. The tech part essentially boils down to 'the right tool for the right job' and don't try to fit square pegs in round holes when you're on a deadline. The list of 'lessons learned' is rather longer than that ;)