

Aaron Swartz:  Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit) - abstractbill
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/perfectionism

======
omouse
"There is something to this, of course. But I have a contrary proposal: users
love perfectionism."

Wrong. I would love to see more new features on reddit rather than waiting for
them to re-write everything. The search function is still somewhat broken!

There is even competition of sorts: <http://redditmedia.com/> That site
displays thumbnails for stories...why doesn't reddit.com have an extra section
or option/setting for that? So many good things could be done if not for this
perfectionism bullshit.

Another good story: 37signals took a long time fixing Backpack and finally
released a new version. Too late, I had already switched to Simple GTD. I
don't get why they didn't incrementally improve things...I bet they've lost
many more users due to their slowness.

Perfectionism is paralyzing.

~~~
steve
Almost,

Success is paralyzing.

~~~
staunch
_"Once a product gets past the stage where it has glaring flaws, you start to
get used to it, and gradually whatever features it happens to have become its
identity."_ \-- Hardest Lessons #2

Reddit certainly fell into that one big time. Digg has done a much better job
at maintaining a fast development pace.

------
gscott
A previous company I worked for split in two, one half took on an online
training site project and my half built an online website development system.
The half that did the training site all hated me because I code by the seat of
my pants, sometimes put out work that needed a tweak or two and I wasn't there
because I was just up for 24 hours writing it. They took 6 months designing
and mapping out there project, they took another 6 months to build it and by
the time they were done they had 3 months of money left to make it successful
and thus went out of business while my side is still going strong 6 years
later. I don't exactly advocate treating users like beta testers, but if you
can`t find any more errors put it out, fix anything you didn't find that gets
reported by the users, then move on.

------
dottertrotter
Personally I used to be like this. I would never launch anything, because
nothing I did was ever good enough for me. However, recently I learned my
lesson. I launched hackrtrackr with only one feature, and without and going
back and rethinking what I had done. The result an insanely simple website
that has taken off very well. Also by launching with only one feature and
minimal code it allowed me to quickly add the features I received requests
for, because I didn't have to wade through a bunch of lines.

~~~
gscott
> Personally I used to be like this. I would never launch anything, because
> nothing I did was ever good enough for me.

Sounds like practice coding to me, I am sure the experience you gained helped
you write what you decided was worthy of releasing.

------
rms
<http://beta.jottit.com/>

~~~
oditogre
<http://beta.jottit.com/8dw3p/>

<http://HowDoesJottitFormattingWork.jottit.com> (same site in theory...doesn't
seem to be working, though.)

Anybody know of where you can get more instructions on how to use it?

Handy for throwing together a random anonymous blog, I guess. Ad-supported, I
assume?

~~~
rms
Right, I'm sorry, I deleted your site. Why the hell could I delete your site?

edit: It's still there in history to be reverted.

~~~
oditogre
Mmm, I didn't know the history button was there, and it only looks like it
saves so many revisions. No biggie tho, I rebuilt it. Not sure why you can
edit anybody's site. Could be fun in some ways I guess. Mental note for
future, tho: Keep a copy in a .txt file...

And I just noticed...it didn't give a username for your edit. Can it be edited
by literally -anyone-, member or not?

\--Nevermind. You can set that up in the setting. The defaults are somewhat
curious.

------
bluishgreen
If aaron wants to indulge let him please go ahed. But this post is so
insincere when it gives the bit about users loving perfectionism that it makes
me dizzy. Its either insincere or is delusional.I don't want to have anything
to do with either.

PG wants to indulge with arc, he went ahed. But I don't remember him giving
some insincere explanation.

I am now a strong believer in motherfucker's theory of insincerity
[http://atomicwang.org/motherfucker/Index/E06C66BF-E7D5-48FF-...](http://atomicwang.org/motherfucker/Index/E06C66BF-E7D5-48FF-9F7C-E6AD1B3F8F28.html)
(sorry, but that what he calls himself)

~~~
mattmaroon
That post about sincerity is interesting but exactly, completely wrong. He's
completely reversed the entire cause effect relationship. I'll write a blog
post as to why.

~~~
henning
quick! to the INTERNET, in order to correct the misconceptions of others!

it never stops being tempting.

~~~
mattmaroon
That's kind of a silly way to look at discourse. All discourse is basically
someone trying to correct the misconceptions of others.

~~~
patchwork
So is there anything besides misconception? Is there One True Conception,
which defeats all others in internet debate?

~~~
mattmaroon
Internet debate gets a bad rep, but it's intrinsically no worse than any other
written debate (which in and of itself is certainly the highest form of
discourse man has ever invented). Sincere internet debate is perhaps 50% of
what makes the medium useful (the other 50% being, of course, videos of
kittens). Insincere internet debate is unfortunately 99% of the overall market
and often clouds that fact. So if anything, there's your unified theory of
sincerity.

As for one true conception, I imagine it exists on many topics, though getting
at it is rather tricky. I've certainly started to argue with people before
only to find out, as I put it in writing, that I agreed with them, sometimes
even for reasons they'd missed. So if the truth is so convoluted that you can
never really know it, perhaps it functionally does not exist.

I now feel my counter argument to the sincerity thing is overhyped though. I
don't have enough time to make it live up. Please don't read, you'll only be
let down.

------
ecuzzillo
Watching this get abandoned will be enormously humorous.

~~~
euccastro
Why? Perfectionists do that all the time.

------
nickb
I notice a lot of animosity towards PG in Aaron's writings...

~~~
mattmaroon
A lot of people have a strong dislike of Aaron. I've certainly had unpleasant
experiences.

~~~
morris
Such as?

~~~
ecuzzillo
I expect Matt will have more personal bad experiences, but the most well-
publicized one goes approximately as follows:

\- Aaron applies to YC, starts Infogami with a co-founder who drops out
(presumably because of Aaron's special interpersonal sparkles).

\- Aaron launches Infogami, with a promise of a new feature every day.

\- Aaron complains for a long time about how he doesn't have a co-founder, and
then merges with Reddit.

\- Aaron abandons Infogami (pissing off all its users, including me), and then
proceeds not to do anything at Reddit, to the chagrin of the Reddits, who just
effectively gave him a bunch of their stock. Aaron nevertheless has time for
nauseatingly many melodramatic blog entries. \- Reddit gets bought, and Aaron
gets an equal share of the spoils.

\- Aaron cries in the bathroom (literally), and then quits Wired, the
acquiring company, by just not showing up to work. (And posts a suicidal blog
entry, and proceeds to delete it.)

\- Aaron does an interview in which he claims to have been part of Reddit from
the beginning, pissing absolutely everyone off.

~~~
mattmaroon
Mine wasn't that bad, but it did involve me being told I had an apartment in
Cambridge locked up, only to find less than two weeks before Y C began that I
didn't.

~~~
aaronsw
Sorry, but how does that involve me?

------
champion
Funny, since Aaron had exactly the opposite strategy when he launched
Infogami, blogging about launching a new feature everyday and taking a very
incremental approach. I don't think that lasted very long though. Everyone is
free to change their mind, of course...

~~~
steve
It is good that he chose an extreme though. Publicity tends to like extremes,
regardless of which extreme it is.

~~~
zach
Certain personalities tend to like extremes in that way as well.

------
far33d
The problem w/ perfectionism is that it's only perfect in the eyes of one
person...

~~~
twism
this statement is so true

------
marketer
That open library project didn't last too long...

~~~
henning
didn't you see that other post? he finished it!

------
zach
Yes, I'm coining a new term - "pefectionism." Don't know what it means, I'll
let the audience decide.

------
axod
I disagree... users love seeing new features. If they don't work so well, they
don't care. Most likely they'll enjoy them and feel privileged they are
getting to use them before they are really ready. They'll see the potential.
They'll start imagining what it'll be like once it's finished. If it's a cool,
innovative feature they haven't seen before, they'll see it as proof you're a
cool place to be. Even if half of it doesn't work.

Get features out often. Of course make sure they don't break anything else, or
reduce the users experience, but users love to see a site evolving and
changing with them on board.

------
palish
Like Artix, Chain would have failed in its current form no matter how smooth
it was polished. It was very important that we failed fast so that we could
focus on morphing it into something that works. You lose that with
perfectionism.

So you'd better be a Steve Jobs.

~~~
gscott
> So you'd better be a Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs is a huge perfectionist. However he will make you work 70+ hours a
week to achieve his perfection and he will ride you every step of the way to
get the best out of you. <http://www.folklore.org>

------
philh
What's the difference between "adding a feature" and "improving the site"?

I always took them to be the same thing. In that sense, you're either adding a
feature or you're stagnating. (Or, I suppose, going backwards.)

~~~
benhoyt
"Getting Real" has the answer to that: <https://gettingreal.37signals.com/>

In short, having fewer features is often the best feature.

~~~
steve
..unless it isn't.

(points to all the billion dollar networking sites on the news)

------
kashif
Wow this discussion has invoked a lot of participation, unfortunately this is
useless discussion. Don't you guys have to hack?

~~~
andyn
What ... and miss the two minute hate?

------
vikram
people seem to confuse adding features to additions in the interface. Most of
the times users are either subconsciously frustrated by a problem or that
there isn't a solution for it yet (i.e. why someone else hasn't solved it
yet).

perfection??? I think most software sucks so much that it doesn't do anything
useful. It would be better to try and get your product to do just one thing
that is useful for one person.

Aiming for perfection is just an excuse for not building something useful.

------
soundsop
I played around a little bit on beta.jottit.com. In editing mode, I like the
live rendering alongside the marked up text. I haven't seen that before.

------
jey
<http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/windows/2007/02/07/jottit> ?

~~~
joe
No, that's Jott.com. Not sure why the author refers to it as "JottIt".

~~~
jey
Thanks for the clarification.

------
ph0rque
hmm... how about a compromise: release early, release often, keep things as
simple as possible, but get those details perfect.

------
oditogre
What's Jottit going to be, then?

~~~
axod
Apart from a failed startup?

------
eusman
looks like so 1999. come on this is 2007. and the name is like a hit train got
over it ...g(j)ot it?

------
whacked_new
I have reservations about that name.

~~~
natrius
No, it's fine. The site's going to let you list famous people who you want to
sign various body parts. It'll make for an interesting tag cloud.

