Pangloss, who was as inquisitive as he was argumentative, asked the old man what the name of the strangled Mufti was. ‘I don’t know,’ answered the worthy man, ‘and I have never known the name of any Mufti, nor of any Vizier. I have no idea what you’re talking about; my general view is that people who meddle with politics usually meet a miserable end, and indeed they deserve to. I never bother with what is going on in Constantinople; I only worry about sending the fruits of the garden which I cultivate off to be sold there.’ Having said these words, he invited the strangers into his house; his two sons and two daughters presented them with several sorts of sherbet, which they had made themselves, with kaimak enriched with the candied-peel of citrons, with oranges, lemons, pine-apples, pistachio-nuts, and Mocha coffee… – after which the two daughters of the honest Muslim perfumed the strangers’ beards. ‘You must have a vast and magnificent estate,’ said Candide to the turk. ‘I have only twenty acres,’ replied the old man; ‘I and my children cultivate them; and our labour preserves us from three great evils: weariness, vice, and want.’ Candide, on his way home, reflected deeply on what the old man had said. ‘This honest Turk,’ he said to Pangloss and Martin, ‘seems to be in a far better place than kings…. I also know,” said Candide, “that we must cultivate our garden.’
The families I know who live best are permaculturalists. Visiting them for dinner is always a treat. It's hard work though, and like others they have supplemental income. I imagine this old man knows well the trick: an independent life is impossible unless you have enough healthy young people around to do the labour.
Love the quote and book, but only half-way agree with the sentiment, unless you stretch the analogy of what the garden is. Simple living/work won't in itself quench or stave off desire and passions. If that were true farmers would be a happier demographic. Desire never really disappears, it's at best channeled through engagement / flow, which dovetails with the fact that man's work is also the strongest predictor of his happiness. I imagine, but don't know, that those who want for nothing are not complacent, and those who are complacent can never consume enough.
> In a garden, things grow... but first, they must wither; trees have to lose their leaves in order to put forth new leaves, and to grow thicker and stronger and taller. Some trees die, but fresh saplings replace them. Gardens need a lot of care. But if you love your garden, you don’t mind working in it, and waiting. Then in the proper season you will surely see it flourish.
> A gardener! Isn’t that the perfect description of what a real businessman is?
I love this and I aspire to eventually, if I come out of the grinder with any ambition, drive, or passion left, do something similar.
I abhor big corpratism, and love the way software can be independent and disconnected from it, if not usually in practice.
I deeply admire Basecamp's style of "you don't need VC money, keep it small, keep building something useful that gets you paid." I want that someday but someday is not this day.
I'm not much of an idea guy. I can build stuff. I can get really passionate about how things "should be" and implement process and infrastructure to get there. But whatever "it" is, just hasn't come to me yet.
I long to be an indiehacker but for all the supposedly wrong reasons.
I want to putter but don't know where to get the right seeds to be puttering for.
I have too many ideas. Every problem or small improvement is a potential business opportunity or startup idea and I see them everywhere. My experience as a software consultant likely contributes to this. It's my job to go talk to customers, understand their problem and propose a solution.
If you want to just build stuff for yourself, go work for a software consulting firm for a while. It should be a smaller one that's interested in tackling smaller jobs. This way, you'll interact with more potential customers. You'll learn a ton about their businesses, because after all; they hired your company to solve their problems. Save as much money as you can.
When you have enough money saved up, you can afford to quit your job and focus on something you that interests you because it's fun or an amazing opportunity. I've done this a couple of times so far. Right now I am splitting my time between a startup and a part time job.
I am really glad I have the part time job. Not so much for the money, but for the socialization aspects.
Is Basecamp really the example to aspire to? Being the developer of Rails and ActiveRecord and fostering and milking that would be the software equivalent of Peter Frampton, and I mean that in the most positive way.
I think we know that we’re not all going platinum. This article was about just “working on the song(s)” for the enjoyment of it, whatever that may involve, or that’s the way I took it.
I second all of this, and this line from the fine article resonated deeply:
> That’s what I want from my products. I want to putter about, feel connected to the process, and have fun doing so.
I too have the same "writer's block" issue for ideas. I've got some, but I dunno, it just seems so hopeless to gamble and go that route.
For now, I've managed to scrimp and invest enough from the day job, I may just quit and putter on projects until I hit on something. If I don't make enough to cover costs, I can try freelancing/consulting. Worst case, I can go back to the corporate grind.
> I'm not much of an idea guy. I can build stuff. I can get really passionate about how things "should be" and implement process and infrastructure to get there. But whatever "it" is, just hasn't come to me yet.
> I deeply admire Basecamp's style of "you don't need VC money, keep it small, keep building something useful that gets you paid.
Honestly, DHH looks to me and comes across to me as extremely burnt out to an unhealthy point. I wouldn't want to aspire what he has become. He doesn't strike me as someone like the author of Bear Blog who just enjoys puttering along. He comes across as someone who constantly stresses himself to become BIG without VC money so he can prove someone that you can achieve VC level success without VC money. As a result he seems to be constantly arguing and lecturing people on social media to a point where it feels difficult to watch. Also Hey feels like a real flop to me, an attempt to fix something that really nobody wanted to be fixed. It's like creating yet another social media app when people are already sickened by the sheer amount of apps which demand their constant attention.
I admire what bear blog stands for and to me that is far away from Basecamp, otherwise I agree with your points :)
I quit my job at Google a little over a year ago to work full time on my product. I still don't make near half the salary, but that connection to my users using a product I built is something that, prior to this last year, I didn't know I'd be so attached to.
Users message me to appreciate some small look & feel improvements, they leave feedback and I fix things for them, I get excited about a new feature and it brings value to their work. I let them vote on the more experimental ideas.
I get happily excited for each new subscription, and it all feels earned, a stark contrast to how I felt about my biweekly paychecks at corporate life.
The product [0] launched on HN a year ago, and I've worked on it almost every day since then, and after having reached some threshold of MRR, I've since felt that I can keep working on it forever.
Tonight, I'm up late releasing another feature [1]. The motivation to do so feels effortless, as, it's my garden.
> Users message me to appreciate some small look & feel improvements, they leave feedback and I fix things for them, I get excited about a new feature and it brings value to their work.
This is great. But if you thrive on this kind of positive feedback, I'm curious to know, if you ever get the occasional bit of angry/negative feedback (e.g. from a user who is really pissed off about a feature change that broke their unique workflow), does it demotivate you? If not, how do you avoid it getting you down? Or is it just so rare that it's not a problem?
terrastruct looks really awesome! Been looking for something like that for a while, I think I’ll test it out. The landing page is very well put together.
I am on the same page with you. But I've also decided to focus all my strength on one thing for the next 5 years just improving it and making it the best product for my customers.
Right now it's so easy to make apps with amazing frameworks like Vue and Laravel that anybody can create something in a week or sometimes even a day[1]. We indiehackers are never short of ideas and shiny objects. I too was part of that movement and I created many projects, one or two even won out Product hunt proudct of the day and started making money too. Alas the fame and fortune was short lived because I was just too distracted and never focused on building one thing.
I never took the step that is much more important than launching the product. It's the boring day-in and day-out sales and marketing part. The content writing and the lead generation part. The SEO part. The thing that acutally brings in the revenue part.
So anytime I have an amazing idea for my next project. I just quietly put in my Google docs and get back to my main focus. I think this is the only thing which will finally help me succeed.
Where are there online communities for people into this kind of tech sub-culture? Most Indie Hacker type communities seem to eventually attract a critical mass of "Hustle Boys" and most startup communities tend to be dismissive of anything that doesn't have hyper-growth potential. It makes sense that a large number of tech entrepreneurs live between these two extremes. Where do they hang out?
I decided to start a Discord for it, it's been on my mind for a while. I'm not interested in the VC moonshot culture, and frankly am not in the location for it anyway. I also don't care for SEO marketing ploys and hustle bullshit.
The community values I would want in a community like that are:
* A focus on building products that meet real world problems
* Pragmatism, stability and longevity in your products
* Discussions about bootstrapping with real customers
* Investment can be useful but it shouldn't be a stand in for a real business model
* Realistically these are businesses, money is a real factor, but no get rich quick schemes, we're just trying to get sensibly rich slowly
* No narcissistic hustle bullshit, no marketing ploys
Mastodon and Pleroma are home to many communities filled with people like this! One of my favorite instances, Merveilles[1], is probably among the highest quality in terms of the people themselves and the projects they work on, but there are dozens of others with similar energy. Make an account somewhere[2][3] and see for yourself!
Oh, and if you're willing to leave the Web, there's also Gemini[4]. Here are some proxied links to aggregators, CAPCOM[5] and Spacewalk[6], where you can find all sorts of people writing about their intimate personal projects, technological and otherwise (although mostly technological).
I think you can find it in the crossover towards more artistic/design/science focussed communities.
Generative art, data visualisation etc. Of course there are hustlers there as well but to me it does feel to be more about the creativity, techniques, ideas.
There are various communities around the web that all have their own personalities. HN, /r/programming and Twitter are the biggest and most active but also most cynical. Lobste.rs (https://lobste.rs/) is almost purely tech focussed. Dev.to is very (overly?) friendly but it's hard to find substance among the noise. Indie Hackers which you've alluded to, does what it says on the tin but also attracts those hustler types.
The great thing about the internet is that if you think it's missing something, you can build it! I've been working on my own tech community called Able (https://able.bio) in my spare time for about 3 years now. I'd like it to be an intersection of software, hardware and business but with less cynicism and self-hype of other places. Just a place to appreciate the merits of human ingenuity. You're welcome to come hang out there if you like.
But yeah, if anyone knows of any other communities I'd also be interested to check them out. I feel like a bit of variety would be nice at the moment.
I was about about to correct that use of "putter" as a typo, but it seems it's a USAism. Never seen that before. I'd always thought machines/engines putter, gardeners potter. I put it to the super-accurate Purported Google Results Test:
putter in my garden - 7 million
potter in my garden - 142 million
putter around - 9 million
potter around - 363 million
putter about - 49 million
potter about - 581 million
Although when I put on a USA accent, there's not very much difference between my "potter" and "putter", maybe that's something to do with "putter" apparently being the US spelling.
The writer is from South Africa, as mentioned in the post. "Putter about" is definitely not a USAism, it's an English expression used throughout the anglophone world that can be spelled "putter" or "potter," meaning the same thing. I've only heard it pronounced "putter" personally. The stats are interesting!
Ha, glad I'm not the only one, I went directly to Wiktionary after finishing the article, which doesn't mark it 'chiefly US' or anything, and gives RP IPA.
Which contains another surprise, for me anyway - it's not pronounced like the golf club, but starting like 'put' (that over there) or 'foot'.
This is me for a sec every time I see UK collective plural nouns, for example, 'Apple have 10k employees'. Actually now that I think about it, people from Britain must feel like something's off even MORE often from this difference than americans, seeing as lots of content online is US english.
One of my favourite quotes is from Jane McGonical: "we are as human beings designed to do hard, meaningful work". If you enjoy gardening, it doesn't feel like work. You do it because it's... meaningful.
Ikigai is that perfect spot in which the work you enjoy doing also creates value from someone else. You are in the zone, doing what you love.
This concept, together with the one about optimising your area of luck that was posted a few days ago, are all you really need to craft a successful - and joyful - career.
Lovely post, and a great idea. I personally very much like the idea of not scaling - and in fact have done this for 10 years with our (still tiny) digital agency. We could have chosen to take on staff many times but instead opt for a lifestyle business where I can hang out and look at the sea and be with my wife and kids.
In building products, my biggest issue to date feels like it is that I rarely bring anything to fruition - but actually this article helped me with that. It really highlighted how it's ok to incrementally push things along, get to a couple of launches just for your own satisfaction, and maybe make a little bit of cash - but you don't have to have any aspiration to "make it big". Thanks for posting :-)
Really feeling this, got so much work done last year by just continuously smoothing out all kinds of small little details in my parametric design software tools. Which individually are all quite insignificant but now it really starts to feel like an ecosystem (garden!) of functions, classes & objects working together in concert for beautiful effects.
This is one thing that has made the transition to a larger company so hard for me. In smaller team, you can spend a bit of time cleaning up the codebase or tooling and know that investment will compound via increased velocity.
This is the actual emotional reason why I am now such a big fan of microservices (or rather, moderately-sized services): I want my own garden to tend alongside a moderately-sized team.
I struggle with balancing the urge to putter like the author puts it, with doing "expansionistic" things like marketing or building features that are valuable to new customers rather than existing ones. The "correct" business analysis will say the business gets much more out of new acquisition channels than micro-optimizing the product further, that I shouldn't fall into the "build it and they will come" mentality. But my first instinct will always be to want to just create the best possible product for my existing customers - it's what brings me joy, and it's really hard for me to designate any suboptimal state of the product as "good enough for now" and focus on acquisition instead. For now I try to balance it by alternating doing one or the other in each sprint - that way I never neglect puttering completely, but I also force myself not to do it exclusively like I'd probably do if I just based the decision on personal motivation.
I agree with you and I will add my own tint to it: I do this to push myself to grow and move forward and then lie back and do what's comfortable and familiar. Rinse and repeat.
I'd say if you have existing customers, you're already past most companies with a "built it and they will come" mentality. Most of those fail to ever acquire real users.
This article resonated with me quite a bit. I very much dislike the fast, throwaway software culture of much software development. A revolving door of technology, platforms and methodology. The first few years you're excited by the pace of learning, and that prospect of new projects is really alluring as it's a new and exciting problem to solve.
Eventually you realise everything you pour your heart into only matters for a year or two before it's inevitably thrown away, replaced by the new kids on the block.
I can see why VC land can support the irrational churn of technology, and that's fine, hell even entire companies are ephemeral in the startup universe. I think it doesn't make sense for any other kind of project. We shouldn't need to rewrite something every year or two, it should have been built to be a stable platform with boring, fundamental technology from which you can grow the product over years to come.
This was a good read. I've read about personal websites being digital gardens, and describe my own as "more of a functional vegetable patch than an ornamental floral garden". However, I've not seen bootstrapped side-projects compared to gardens, and like the analogy between gardening and farming, where gardening is more fun and less scalable than farming (but that being a good thing in this context). I wonder if a smallholding might be a more appropriate analogy for side-projects though, given gardens and personal websites are usually for personal use while smallholdings and side-projects are more likely to have a small commercial element.
I like the idea of being a custodian of the things I do and have done, which sort of align with the idea in the article. Of course I don't always have the opportunity to do so with clients pushing for new features and so on. But when I can, I do.
It makes the things I make just a little better every time by adding small new features or making small improvements on existing ones. No one asked for them, but they are nonetheless thankful that I did them.
I don't think I could work in an environment that would not let me do those things, there's very little that makes me more unhappy than producing garbage work and 'shutting up'.
What a nice sentiment, and one I am completely on board with. I've likened my "digital puttering" to my father whiling away the hours in the garage during my childhood. Some hammering, some grinding, and my mother occasionally taking out a cup of tea.
And to build on that there was a cool video recently about a forensic pathologist in Houston who makes kitchen knives. He's not scaling, but it seems that it is a hobby that he loves.
[+] [-] wombatmobile|5 years ago|reply
-- Voltaire, Candide
[+] [-] telesilla|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slothtrop|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] singlow|5 years ago|reply
> In a garden, things grow... but first, they must wither; trees have to lose their leaves in order to put forth new leaves, and to grow thicker and stronger and taller. Some trees die, but fresh saplings replace them. Gardens need a lot of care. But if you love your garden, you don’t mind working in it, and waiting. Then in the proper season you will surely see it flourish.
> A gardener! Isn’t that the perfect description of what a real businessman is?
[+] [-] hoytech|5 years ago|reply
https://www.18thcenturycommon.org/cultivating-philosophy-in-...
[+] [-] tmountain|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elliotec|5 years ago|reply
I abhor big corpratism, and love the way software can be independent and disconnected from it, if not usually in practice.
I deeply admire Basecamp's style of "you don't need VC money, keep it small, keep building something useful that gets you paid." I want that someday but someday is not this day.
I'm not much of an idea guy. I can build stuff. I can get really passionate about how things "should be" and implement process and infrastructure to get there. But whatever "it" is, just hasn't come to me yet.
I long to be an indiehacker but for all the supposedly wrong reasons.
I want to putter but don't know where to get the right seeds to be puttering for.
[+] [-] hahamrfunnyguy|5 years ago|reply
If you want to just build stuff for yourself, go work for a software consulting firm for a while. It should be a smaller one that's interested in tackling smaller jobs. This way, you'll interact with more potential customers. You'll learn a ton about their businesses, because after all; they hired your company to solve their problems. Save as much money as you can.
When you have enough money saved up, you can afford to quit your job and focus on something you that interests you because it's fun or an amazing opportunity. I've done this a couple of times so far. Right now I am splitting my time between a startup and a part time job.
I am really glad I have the part time job. Not so much for the money, but for the socialization aspects.
[+] [-] afry1|5 years ago|reply
If you're looking for a little inspiration, here are a couple links:
- Pieter Levels' announcement post on 12 startups in 12 months: https://levels.io/12-startups-12-months/
- My own blog, where I'm documenting my own journey in building a startup in a month: https://startupinamonth.net/
I hope you break out soon!
[+] [-] friseurtermin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwantim1|5 years ago|reply
I think we know that we’re not all going platinum. This article was about just “working on the song(s)” for the enjoyment of it, whatever that may involve, or that’s the way I took it.
[+] [-] npsimons|5 years ago|reply
> That’s what I want from my products. I want to putter about, feel connected to the process, and have fun doing so.
I too have the same "writer's block" issue for ideas. I've got some, but I dunno, it just seems so hopeless to gamble and go that route.
For now, I've managed to scrimp and invest enough from the day job, I may just quit and putter on projects until I hit on something. If I don't make enough to cover costs, I can try freelancing/consulting. Worst case, I can go back to the corporate grind.
> I'm not much of an idea guy. I can build stuff. I can get really passionate about how things "should be" and implement process and infrastructure to get there. But whatever "it" is, just hasn't come to me yet.
Me too, friend. Me too.
[+] [-] dustinmoris|5 years ago|reply
Honestly, DHH looks to me and comes across to me as extremely burnt out to an unhealthy point. I wouldn't want to aspire what he has become. He doesn't strike me as someone like the author of Bear Blog who just enjoys puttering along. He comes across as someone who constantly stresses himself to become BIG without VC money so he can prove someone that you can achieve VC level success without VC money. As a result he seems to be constantly arguing and lecturing people on social media to a point where it feels difficult to watch. Also Hey feels like a real flop to me, an attempt to fix something that really nobody wanted to be fixed. It's like creating yet another social media app when people are already sickened by the sheer amount of apps which demand their constant attention.
I admire what bear blog stands for and to me that is far away from Basecamp, otherwise I agree with your points :)
[+] [-] alixanderwang|5 years ago|reply
Users message me to appreciate some small look & feel improvements, they leave feedback and I fix things for them, I get excited about a new feature and it brings value to their work. I let them vote on the more experimental ideas.
I get happily excited for each new subscription, and it all feels earned, a stark contrast to how I felt about my biweekly paychecks at corporate life.
The product [0] launched on HN a year ago, and I've worked on it almost every day since then, and after having reached some threshold of MRR, I've since felt that I can keep working on it forever.
Tonight, I'm up late releasing another feature [1]. The motivation to do so feels effortless, as, it's my garden.
[0] https://terrastruct.com
[1] Sync diagrams with a github repo, ~hacking the README as a presentation tool (https://github.com/terrastruct-bot/Demo)
[+] [-] playpause|5 years ago|reply
This is great. But if you thrive on this kind of positive feedback, I'm curious to know, if you ever get the occasional bit of angry/negative feedback (e.g. from a user who is really pissed off about a feature change that broke their unique workflow), does it demotivate you? If not, how do you avoid it getting you down? Or is it just so rare that it's not a problem?
[+] [-] koeng|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huzaif|5 years ago|reply
I am still hacking around on it. I would like to sign-up as a team, though I only have need for 3 seats.
[+] [-] thejosh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghoomketu|5 years ago|reply
Right now it's so easy to make apps with amazing frameworks like Vue and Laravel that anybody can create something in a week or sometimes even a day[1]. We indiehackers are never short of ideas and shiny objects. I too was part of that movement and I created many projects, one or two even won out Product hunt proudct of the day and started making money too. Alas the fame and fortune was short lived because I was just too distracted and never focused on building one thing.
I never took the step that is much more important than launching the product. It's the boring day-in and day-out sales and marketing part. The content writing and the lead generation part. The SEO part. The thing that acutally brings in the revenue part.
So anytime I have an amazing idea for my next project. I just quietly put in my Google docs and get back to my main focus. I think this is the only thing which will finally help me succeed.
[1] https://24hrstartup.com/
[+] [-] beachy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tangjurine|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benjaminjosephw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehnto|5 years ago|reply
The community values I would want in a community like that are:
* A focus on building products that meet real world problems
* Pragmatism, stability and longevity in your products
* Discussions about bootstrapping with real customers
* Investment can be useful but it shouldn't be a stand in for a real business model
* Realistically these are businesses, money is a real factor, but no get rich quick schemes, we're just trying to get sensibly rich slowly
* No narcissistic hustle bullshit, no marketing ploys
[+] [-] cosmojg|5 years ago|reply
Oh, and if you're willing to leave the Web, there's also Gemini[4]. Here are some proxied links to aggregators, CAPCOM[5] and Spacewalk[6], where you can find all sorts of people writing about their intimate personal projects, technological and otherwise (although mostly technological).
[1]https://merveilles.town/public
[2]https://joinmastodon.org/
[3]https://pleroma.social/
[4]https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
[5]https://proxy.vulpes.one/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/cap...
[6]https://proxy.vulpes.one/gemini/rawtext.club:1965/~sloum/spa...
[+] [-] erwinh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] new_here|5 years ago|reply
The great thing about the internet is that if you think it's missing something, you can build it! I've been working on my own tech community called Able (https://able.bio) in my spare time for about 3 years now. I'd like it to be an intersection of software, hardware and business but with less cynicism and self-hype of other places. Just a place to appreciate the merits of human ingenuity. You're welcome to come hang out there if you like.
But yeah, if anyone knows of any other communities I'd also be interested to check them out. I feel like a bit of variety would be nice at the moment.
[+] [-] baxtr|5 years ago|reply
PS: I also like the gardener analogy. It is used elsewhere, too, e.g. the “Gardener-Leader” concept of the US Army.
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Ar...
[+] [-] shoo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yesenadam|5 years ago|reply
I was about about to correct that use of "putter" as a typo, but it seems it's a USAism. Never seen that before. I'd always thought machines/engines putter, gardeners potter. I put it to the super-accurate Purported Google Results Test:
putter in my garden - 7 million
potter in my garden - 142 million
putter around - 9 million
potter around - 363 million
putter about - 49 million
potter about - 581 million
Although when I put on a USA accent, there's not very much difference between my "potter" and "putter", maybe that's something to do with "putter" apparently being the US spelling.
[+] [-] elliotec|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OJFord|5 years ago|reply
Which contains another surprise, for me anyway - it's not pronounced like the golf club, but starting like 'put' (that over there) or 'foot'.
[+] [-] emddudley|5 years ago|reply
My pronunciation of putter is "puh-ter" (same sound as under) and potter is "pah-ter" (same sound as father).
[+] [-] moosebear847|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikstarck|5 years ago|reply
One of my favourite quotes is from Jane McGonical: "we are as human beings designed to do hard, meaningful work". If you enjoy gardening, it doesn't feel like work. You do it because it's... meaningful.
Ikigai is that perfect spot in which the work you enjoy doing also creates value from someone else. You are in the zone, doing what you love.
This concept, together with the one about optimising your area of luck that was posted a few days ago, are all you really need to craft a successful - and joyful - career.
[+] [-] dmje|5 years ago|reply
In building products, my biggest issue to date feels like it is that I rarely bring anything to fruition - but actually this article helped me with that. It really highlighted how it's ok to incrementally push things along, get to a couple of launches just for your own satisfaction, and maybe make a little bit of cash - but you don't have to have any aspiration to "make it big". Thanks for posting :-)
[+] [-] erwinh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erwinh|5 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/hoogerwoord/status/1348394004413620224?s...
[+] [-] afarrell|5 years ago|reply
When you share a codebase with 200 others, trying to get anything tidy and readable is such a yak-shaving exercise, you feel like the main character from https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/
This is the actual emotional reason why I am now such a big fan of microservices (or rather, moderately-sized services): I want my own garden to tend alongside a moderately-sized team.
[+] [-] m12k|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plumsempy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevsim|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] regulation_d|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmlnr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aogaili|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Naac|5 years ago|reply
Thank you for linking to that article.
[+] [-] ehnto|5 years ago|reply
Eventually you realise everything you pour your heart into only matters for a year or two before it's inevitably thrown away, replaced by the new kids on the block.
I can see why VC land can support the irrational churn of technology, and that's fine, hell even entire companies are ephemeral in the startup universe. I think it doesn't make sense for any other kind of project. We shouldn't need to rewrite something every year or two, it should have been built to be a stable platform with boring, fundamental technology from which you can grow the product over years to come.
[+] [-] m-i-l|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FriedrichN|5 years ago|reply
It makes the things I make just a little better every time by adding small new features or making small improvements on existing ones. No one asked for them, but they are nonetheless thankful that I did them.
I don't think I could work in an environment that would not let me do those things, there's very little that makes me more unhappy than producing garbage work and 'shutting up'.
[+] [-] eecks|5 years ago|reply
Them: What are you doing?
Me: Making a website
Them: Why?
Me: Just am.
[+] [-] simplecto|5 years ago|reply
And to build on that there was a cool video recently about a forensic pathologist in Houston who makes kitchen knives. He's not scaling, but it seems that it is a hobby that he loves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VPSlfz65h8