

Programmers are distraction for your startup - 3x14159265
http://blog.tightstartup.com/programmers-are-distraction-for-your-startup/

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Guvante
While the phrasing seems to be insulting to the demographic that this site
cares too, I don't think he is wrong fundamentally. Also note that he is
specifically talking about programmers doing actual work, not
consulting/discussing ideas with programmers. Asking whether this platform
idea could ever work is great, getting someone to write a website that gives
you X, Y and Z features before you know whether those features are core is
bad.

Put another way, he is saying to focus on prototyping in the most lean way
possible. If Google spreadsheets can work to try out your idea, hiring a
programmer is certainly not something to do before you have tried out your
idea on the stable, free, always available platform.

And honestly the underlying idea might not be too far off for more technical
minded problems. Figure out what your product is, then build stuff around it.
More failures than can be counted are centered around technology that didn't
work out and more importantly _wasn 't required for the core product_.

It isn't that programming isn't important, it is the usual lean mindset, until
you have a good idea of what your product is supposed to be, having a
programmer working on structure for it is at best overly eager, at worst a
complete waste of time.

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cmiles74
DR: If you can develop your startup's "product" without writing any code, then
writing said code anyway would be a distraction.

The author gives a couple examples of startups that started off with a Google
spreadsheet or an e-mail list. If that doesn't sound like your tech startup,
well, then programmers will be kind of important.

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PeterWhittaker
I'll offer a counter-thought to the carping about how stupid this is, the _ad
hominem_ attacks, etc.

The author is correct, at least for some ideas and some founders.

The author also points out several successful products that grew from
decidedly low-tech, sub-optimal incarnations.

Technologists - and I consider myself a recovering technologist - are often
distracted by the shiny, by the optimal, by the novel. Sometimes a product is
a functional but ugly hack of adequate pieces assembled to prove whether or
not an idea works, and, with a few very rare exceptions, is or should never
be, at least not out of the gate, optimal.

Sometimes technologists have cool ideas they build out into eventual products
that once in a while become the core of a business. That can be a very long
cycle.

Business guys just keep doing business, much to the consternation of many of
us tech guys.

Product people talk to users, spend money on surveys, hack shit together, and
see if things work, if ideas stick.

Are we still fans of "fail fast" on HN? I haven't kept up. If you want to fail
fast, do it for cheap, and do it low tech.

IM(NS)HO, of course. YMMV.

~~~
Guvante
> The author also points out several successful products that grew from
> decidedly low-tech, sub-optimal incarnations.

I don't know if I would call Google spreadsheets low-tech and sub-optimal. It
isn't very well optimized but it hits all of the important points for a
prototype, cheap, scalable and high uptime.

I totally agree though, the idea that you shouldn't get distracted by the
implementation you dream of is very solid and one that is purported as
important here all the time (just phrased differently).

~~~
S4M
I think PeterWhittaker is saying that Nomad List's version that was running on
Google Spreadsheet was a suboptimal one (a prototype if you prefer). It
doesn't mean that Google spreadsheets is low-tech or suboptimal (it's not).

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striking
It's true that you shouldn't write any code before you have some sort of
backing design planned. However, the role of a programmer is similarly
important, even in the design phase. If you're making anything that has to do
with computers, a programmer is usually the one who will tell you what is or
isn't possible. That's important, no?

This piece of advice is either inadvisable or just poorly written. IMO:
Design, prototype, clean up. If you can do that without a programmer, cool.
But chances are that you'll need one, either to tell you that you're wrong, or
to tell you how to do it better. Code isn't the only thing programmers
produce.

This article was brought to you by "Tech Lead at SmartHires (YC S14)"
apparently.

~~~
andallas
He's also listed as a "Fail Expert"

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sanxiyn
This is a general principle. Functionality is an asset, but code is a
liability. You should write as little code as possible.

~~~
merb
If you write as little code as possible you would still do it wrong. A working
prototype won't follow DRY, etc.. So mostly it will end up with more lines
than a good prototype would be.

I mean nobody is perfect, some design decisions are mostly wrong at the first
days, but that doesn't change anything, as long as you can keep running and
that's what running at scale means. Drive a car with 140 km/h and replace all
parts while driving.

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freddyy
I think a lot of people don't get the idea of a tight startup. Most comments
refer to the old lean aproaches. In a lean startup you would build an MVP and
you might need programmers for that. The tight approach proves the business
and innovation without actually knowing the product. Please refer to
[http://www.tightstartup.com](http://www.tightstartup.com). It is totally
obvious that programmers are a distraction for a tight startup (in most
cases).

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minimaxir
It should be noted that the contrarian article title ("Programmers are
distraction for your startup") is deliberate, which is why there are so many
comments in response. It's a linkbait title with plausible deniability.

Also a note to people who write blog article with such titles: HN has a flame
war detector. It's not a smart idea.

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z3t4
I would never invest in a tech company that had more non-engineers then
engineers. Especially if they didn't have a ready product.

My experience with such companies is that their focus is on office decoration,
rather then the product.

If you are not the engineer type, make sure you hire three of those to make up
for it. :P

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mrtpr
Strongly disagree. If you have a really good idea and you start to attract
users,youshoulddefinetely start coding. Otherwise, someone can launch a
product and that users will start to use that product.

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k__
Reminds me of an email I once got.

"Hey, we are 5 business guys with an idea and need you to build it!"

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mindcrime
The title is a little bit of hyperbole, and I know this is going to get a lot
of comments saying things like "this is fucking stupid", but this is actually
pretty insightful. Building stuff before you know you're building something
somebody needs/wants is very risky and can be a total money/time/attention
sink. _To the extent that it 's possible_, it IS a good idea to try and
validate the product idea BEFORE writing code.

If we've made one big mistake at Fogbeam over the years, I'd actually say that
it's building too much of the actual product, instead of using mockups and
dummied-up demos and what-not just to test the demand for the concept. Early
on I had a lot of mindset of "We need to build a fair amount of this, so we
can show it to people, so we can find out if they need/want it or not". But
honestly, we could have done wireframes, mocks, backend-less demos that were
totally dummied up, etc, just to test the concept in front of potential
customers.

So yeah, I'd say, don't get too caught up in the headline, but read the
article and really think about what the author is saying. IMO, there is some
valuable truth here.

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michaelochurch
You know what I consider a distraction? Fucking _electrons_. Seriously. Half
the time, they seem to be killing people. You know that people who do nothing
wrong sometimes get killed by electricity that comes _from the fucking sky_ ,
like out of nowhere? It's like these prima donna electrons want to obey
fundamental forces instead of build products!

We should seriously consider an electron-free lifestyle. I don't mean that we
swear off electricity. I'm saying that we get rid of all of fucking chemistry
(which is dominated by interactions of outermost electrons of atoms). It's a
fucking distraction. We don't need it. Sure, our brains will need to use a
different fundamental particle for neurons to signal each other with, and
we'll have to evolve an exotic chemistry to replace our current composition,
but you hear about pentaquarks every day. It can't be that hard, with all the
modern science... oh, wait.

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debacle
This is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen on this site, though I admire
the author's love, of commas.

