

Programming is a way to Procrastinate - mrphoebs
http://blog.cubeofm.com/programming-is-a-way-to-procrastinate

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mquander
Apparently in the writer's world, people who make things are
_"lazy...mindless...procrastinators."_ On the other hand, people who sell
things that have already been made are _"thinking, and doing hard work in
areas [they] barely understand. It's real work compared to programming."_

Pure troll.

~~~
roam
No, he's talking about programmers who want to sell software without spending
time on marketing it to their potential customers. Unless you've got an
incredible product you'll have to get off your ass at some point and actively
try to sell it. That's where the procrastination part pops up and I've been
guilty of this myself.

~~~
CoreDumpling
But if it's procrastination because I'm trying to avoid it (because I'm not
good at it), isn't that the perfect opportunity to bring in the "marketing
guy/gal" cofounder to do that work for me? Ideally, you would then only have
to actively "sell" it to one person who can pass it on to the rest.

What's being called procrastination here, I'd prefer to call specialization.
But I'm probably being naive about this.

~~~
rapind
How can you tell if your marketing guy is any good if you don't spend some
time at it yourself? You know your own product better than anyone else. If
you're passionate about the problem you're solving then start telling people
who are experiencing that problem.

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angelbob
I agree -- for software engineers, programming is a popular way to
procrastinate. Refactoring doubly so :-)

Whereas, for somebody comfortable with selling and networking but
uncomfortable making or improving products, the networking and selling would
be a way to procrastinate.

~~~
raganwald
> for somebody comfortable with selling and networking but uncomfortable
> making or improving products, the networking and selling would be a way to
> procrastinate.

No, no, you did the hard bit, coming up with an idea, and you have the
connections and the sales know-how to make the business succeed. Now all you
need is a cofounder who will come in and implement it in exchange for some
sweat equity, say 1% of a business that will be worth at least one hundred
million dollars.

~~~
ramchip
Hello sir. I had this idea yesterday for a site like facebook but with
classifieds like craig's list in it and I'm looking for an experienced C/C++
coder...

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robryan
There can only be so many minimalist apps, some startups have to aim a little
bit higher than the low hanging fruit where it isn't so much about good
marketing and a clean intuitive layout. For these people I don't think a long
time programming is procrastination but rather a necessity.

Also if you have money tucked away to survive in some cases it would be better
to sit back, re factor, add/ improve features until you have something your
really confident about spreading it around widely. There is a lot of talk
about release early, but for smaller unknowns you may only get one chance to
make a good initial impression.

~~~
patio11
I strongly disagree that you only get one chance for a first impression.
Minimally, you get one chance at a first impression _per customer_.

None of you saw my site when it launched, because you were not among the 70
people who were subjected to that horror. (Those brave souls gave me many
insights on how to make it better.) For the 60% of 5,000 people who visited
yesterday who had never been to the site before, the past 3.5 years
essentially didn't happen. To them, my site launched on Valentine's Day.

I also think people vastly, vastly overstate the degree to which you will
develop a "reputation" or "brand" as being (whatever you are currently). Large
companies pay Madison Avenue staggering sums of money to get people to
remember them. They do it because it is inherently hard work. 99.99% of the
time, a user having a negative experience with your site ends with the back
button. 99.99% of the remainder, you get an email with, ahem, variable levels
of politeness. Respond to it with grace and humility, and you'll avoid almost
all long-term issues.

~~~
robryan
Very true, it depends on your product though. If your getting a lot of your
business through things like adwords/search and occasional articles/
recommendations your exactly right. Although if your developing something big
the first impression is going to mean a lot. Take something like Google Buzz
(admittedly even bigger than the range I'm advocating it for), I think that
kind of first impression, where the service is all over the tech media and
being talked about in social media, the first impression is going to mean
quiet a lot in terms of future adoption.

Another example, Age of Conan, great game idea, early execution was off and it
set them on a path where they were never really going to get back to initial
subscription numbers no matter how much effort they put into the game.

~~~
patio11
Yeah, games are quirky in that ongoing development on them is largely a lost
cause (sole exception in the industry: Blizzard) and that they have a shelf-
life measured in weeks. If I were head of a game studio my first action would
be to fire myself because everything I know is wrong for them.

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gridspy
A very interesting article that points out that a start-up business requires
more than just code. Once the code is done, you need marketing, support and
sales. At that point, adding features is just procrastination - far too
tempting for many hackers.

I think it is likely this is one reason why PG says you have to go fulltime,
fully commit to your startup - once you run out of money you are forced to go
to the market place and actually sell. Many people who are creating a startup
in their free time can put this off forever.

Imagine how much better Segway would have done if they had gone to market
earlier and discovered that few people actually wanted a slow, gyroscopic
bike.

~~~
nostrademons
I thought Joel's point was a bit better way of putting this: sales acts as a
multiplier on product quality (and vice versa). So if _either_ factor is zero,
your total revenue will be zero too. If you try to sell a crappy product, you
won't get any bites, and if you have a great product but never try to sell it,
nobody will know about it.

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sasidharm
The author seems to be under the impression that programming is same as
building a product. Building a decent product is much more time consuming and
mentally exhausting especially if you are on your own (sure being on your own
gives you a lot of flexibility in making decisions quickly). If you want to
build a product that does good business, what you need is a decent team with
at least one developer/product owner, one sales person/marketing person and
one customer.

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ww520
I actually should have been programming instead of playing video games. Am I
doing double layers of procrastination?

Seriously something programming is very hard, like tracing down an elusive bug
or getting the performance to go higher. These things are what make or break a
product. Doing the programming is necessary.

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winter_blue
This reminds me of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1123175>

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10ren
Not sure if it's _laziness_ , but a lack of courage, confidence, trust and...
dare I say it... faith.

The unknown is scary.

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quellhorst
Writing blog posts is an even easier way to procrastinate than programming.

~~~
jff
Currently, I'm replying to a comment about a blog post, so I can avoid writing
Matlab code. I must be the ultimate procrastinator.

