sasha_fishter

I have been programming for the last 7 years professionally. I like computers from my early age. My father bought me Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ when I was in the first grade. Since then, computers were part of my life, significantly. I stare at my screen almost whole day. One day there was some voice in me saying "Buy a typewriter". I listened to the voice and bought Smith Corona Silent from 1946. It was the most profound experience I ever had with some kind of machine. I was not so happy when I got my first cell phone, and later smartphone nor computer. This is something different, probably because the basics are the same, I'm still typing.

Suddenly I found myself writing a diary, and a novel. I never wrote anything other than blog posts (many of them since I had website similar to The Verge) - which I sold later.

I now have 3 typewriters, 2x Smith Corona Silent (1946 and 1956), and Olympia Monica (I think it's from '70).

What I found very interesting is that writing on a typewriter is perfectly synchronized with how fast my mind is working. Time slows down! I read that on the web somewhere, and it is slowing the time when you type on a typewriter! I can confess that!

My fingers are too fast on computer keyboard, and I even don't want to talk about distractions like auto correct and other stuff that always pops up. This is something what really makes me feel good. I can write a story, poem, diary, or a letter to a friend.

It's truly something we should have on our desk somewhere in the room, and just put our thoughts on a paper.

I've never been a writer as a novelist. I wrote many blog posts, but never something meaningful. Recently I've started to looking at typewriters and fell in love in Smith Corona, so I bought Silent from 1946. Immediately after I started writing, novel started writing itself. I found that weird feeling, that I'm not a writer but just a channel or medium for that story to go through me on a paper. Anybody had this feeling before?

I'm little bit baffled about what it takes to be good at something, building a business, being a good developer, designer, artist, whatever.

I recently saw a documentary about Pirate Bay, and I notice a pattern. I.e. Gottfrid Svartholm was all into the building stuff, he learned along the way, probably yes, he read books, articles, whatever, but what I've seen in many people his calibre is that they just work on something and learned more and more. They've become experts even thought they maybe didn't realised that.

So the question is, do we need to read all those book, articles, podcasts, documentaries to be good, or is it mostly waste of time that we could spend learning through practice?

I started this small project for booking tennis courts in 2018. It was free until this year, when I started charging clubs for using my platform. Out of 15 clubs, 14 clubs agreed to pay for my solution. I'm doing some updated, no marketing at all. It's a side project.

Should I sell it? Work on it? Leave it?

If you are building whatever product, there is always many features to be added, but in the end, very little percentage of people are actually using it. I.e. companies are sending emails about new features, but I never go through them to see what's new.

What's your opinion here? You have to add something, like beer companies are changing the bottle design, they don't change the taste of the beer.

Is this best advice for every business ever?

The thing is, I don't like the most people are approaching the business. Something like, follow this steps, research the internet (everything is the same most of the time), this is way you should do it, etc.

On the other hand, it's really difficult to pave your own path. It's really hard, and you loose motivation after few months.

What's your opinion on this topic? Is it ok to follow some 'rules' which is something most people do, or is it better to create your own path?

Reading how to build something, marketing products, this and that. Everybody has their own opinion, but is it worth spending time and listen to others?

Is it better to just start and do what you think is good and learn from your own mistakes?

Agree or disagree?

I'm hearing and seeing a lot of folks who are starting their ideas with landing page first. There's a lot of advices on why everyone should test their ideas this way, but do users really want to have a bunch of landing pages with all sorts of ideas and subscribe to them, or they want to see and test demo project, even if it's buggy?

I don't like the 'landing page first' approach. I'm testing it but no success so far. I think that we went through that phase. First was 'Build MVP', then 'Build landing page'. MVP nowadays are much complex, and landing page is something that you can build in a day.

What are your thoughts?