4 ms·

There's no such thing as a prototype. The design decisions you make early on will stay with you. How you treat "occasionally connected" users is likely to have

• kintamanimatt 13y ago
  I can understand what dllthomas is talking about. I'd never write a full-blown prototype, but whenever I'm writing a non-trivial app for myself it can be quite productive to write 10% of the app, throw that away, and start again. This strategy always gives me a better understanding of the problem, the app's architecture and so on, as well as a ton of new ideas.
  • dllthomas 13y ago
    Right, that's pretty much what I was talking about. Not so much something "officially blessed as a prototype" but "does this make sense at all?" experimentation shy of an MVP. I've heard "write it, throw it away, rewrite it" attributed to Knuth, and while that's overstating it a little you definitely learn things in your first attempt.
    • leoc 13y ago
      Fred Brooks, maybe? > The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. […] Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow. But as someone on Ward's Wiki said http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PlanToThrowOneAway http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PlanToThrowOneAway , > The corollary to this is that if you plan to throw one away, you will end up throwing away two.
      • dllthomas 13y ago
        Yeah, I've seen that one too. Could very well be memetically related (through Knuth or not).