
Version 1 Sucks, But Ship It Anyway - fogus
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001313.html
======
michael_dorfman
Atwood's a perfectionist? You couldn't tell it from the quality of his blog
posts.

Version 1 sucks. Ship it anyway? Yeah, Cuil can tell you how well that worked
out.

Clearly, the decision to ship is one that should be taken seriously, and the
pros and cons of shipping need to be weighed. There's an upside to shipping
early (feedback from users) but there are a lot of potential downsides as
well.

But we all knew that already, didn't we?

~~~
_pius
_Version 1 sucks. Ship it anyway? Yeah, Cuil can tell you how well that worked
out._

Cuil didn't just ship; Cuil was launched Hollywood style with a tremendous
amount of anticipation and buzz. If they had soft launched, their fail
wouldn't have been nearly as epic.

<http://www.google.com/trends?q=cuil>

------
MikeMacMan
I understand Jeff's point, but this post tripped my false dichotomy alarm:

A. "spending three months fixing up this version in a sterile, isolated lab"

OR

B. "listening to feedback from real live, honest-to-god, dedicated users of
your software."

You shouldn't need to 'ship' in order to get feedback from potential users.
You should be engaged with them early-on, during the design and development of
your product.

I would revise Jeff's argument to read: "Don't develop in a vacuum. Get
feedback as early on as possible. If you need to ship something in order to
get that feedback, then so be it, but that's risky. "

------
dan_sim
I'm sick of hearing that... it has been said over and over already.

~~~
nathanb
Agreed...since when is "ship early and iterate often" either new or
controversial?

------
buckwilson
You just need to weigh the scope and reward of individual things. Some things
are worth waiting for, others aren't. From a hype perspective a journalist can
help you understand what your experience is missing for it to be considered a
success to them.

For instance, before we launched a version of our software, we spent two
months working on security mechanisms to make sure it couldn't be stolen or
pirated or hacked. While security is important, it was a mistake for us to
take it as seriously as we did, and we wound up wasting those resources in
hindsight.

