

Why you shouldn't copy us or anyone else - adityakothadiya
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1561-why-you-shouldnt-copy-us-or-anyone-else

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TomOfTTB
Quick Summary of this article…

Whenever a successful person recounts how they got that way take note of it.
When you start something new go over the list of things you took note of and
use your own judgment to decide what will and will not work for you. But don't
copy anything verbatim.

There, I just saved you like 3 minutes of life. You're welcome :)

~~~
jamesbritt
"When you start something new go over the list of things you took note of and
use your own judgment to decide what will and will not work for you. But don't
copy anything verbatim."

Is this something that people really need be told? I suppose that's
rhetorical, given the number of folks who swear by alleged methods of success
that just happened to work (or be recollected as working) for one person or
another.

~~~
unalone
People need to be told that. It disgusts me, the people who will steal half of
one site and half another and put them together without thought, but they
exist.

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TrevorJ
I have found it is really beneficial to copy somebody else, but ONLY if you
take the extra step of completely deconstructing the solution to understand
exactly what makes it work. Once you've identified the inner workings of it
you have gained the ability to change it to fit your needs and take it far
beyond the original design. In short, learn the principles behind the design
and you can apply it anywhere.

~~~
jsdalton
Really? I'm the opposite.

I will admit right now that I copy/borrow/steal design and concept ideas from
other websites relentlessly.

I find, however, that I tend to do it for stuff around the periphery of an
application. For example, how should my forgot password process work? What
should my copyright notice look like? How should I format a success or error
notification message? What should my button widgets look like?

Such things that are not central to the purpose of an application I am working
I expend as little thought as possible on, and tend to copy whatever I see
someone successful doing (hey, i think, if it didn't stand in their way, it
probably won't stand in mine). I spend more of my "picking apart" brainpower
on the original/unique stuff my app is doing.

Admittedly, I do a fair amount of copying of the kind you are referring to as
well, but I don't entirely agree that that's the "only" kind of copying that's
beneficial.

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captainobvious
I thought the link would point here:

<http://huddlechat.appspot.com/>

With the implied answer to the headline being: because we'll bust your knees
if you even think about trying it.

