✓ Random quote from historic/epic source ✓ Exhortations to throw caution to the wind and just ship ✓ Gratuitous bash of unit testing ✓ Bragging about a quick, rich, exit to a bigger company
Do you disagree with what he is saying? If so, why? Just listing shit like that is worthless. Back your thoughts up - alternate points of view that can be justified should be encouraged.
Just saying 'bah, this is fluff' isn't being justified here, it's just bashing for bashings sake, on the altar of 'whats killing HN'.
On the other extreme of the spectrum, some companies build a beautiful product but wait too late to ship. I've seen these companies die without ever having shipped.
Don't live either ends of the extreme. Ship fast, but not too fast.
That is just so sad. I agreed until that one, living for shipping makes you live for others. What about doing things for just the casue of doing it? I don't consider my random hacks shipping, it's just a journey on the sea (to use the same methaphors).
Well, I'm still dealing with bugs and systemic design issues today. Sure, the users are using it, but if I'd pushed back and taken the time to do a meaningful design on it, things would be a lot more stable today.
TLDR: Shipping Ships.
Have a Mac OS X productivity app nearly ready to go out the door, but my partner and I have planned to have a dozen people or so beta test the app first.
The reason behind this is that you only get one first impression. And if that's "your app crashed", or worse "your app lost my work", then I feel like that is worse than delaying a release.