I'm working on a talk called "build impossible things" about writing a program (rbspy!!) that was outside of my comfort zone. so here's a series of myths about building ambitious-for-you software!
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Myth 1: "Ruby has existed for like 20 years. If it were a good idea someone would have done it already." Reality: Not that many people actually work on Ruby profilers! Those people have different priorities and interests than me!
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Myth 2: To build innovative software you have to already be an expert Reality: Doing a survey of how all existing Ruby/Python profilers worked helped me a LOT to understand the current state of the art and what I could contribute
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Myth 3: You should always use tools you're already comfortable with Reality: In this case, it was really important for me to invest in learning some new-to-me tools (Rust!!)
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Myth 4: to build open source software you have to code a lot on the weekends / after work (I basically don't code on the weekend. Instead, I took time off work to do my project!)
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I'm still working on these ideas so I'd love to hear what has helped you to build ambitious software!
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I want to hear more about how you build software that is new / different / ambitious without like "well step 1 is be a wizard genius with infinite time" :)
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Replying to @b0rk
Every ambitious project I’ve ever been on that outperformed expectations had a very small proof of concept, a tight learning cycle, and an arbitrarily high number of cycles. It’s the “First checkpoint: cure cancer” sort of projects that never seem to go anywhere.
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Do you have an example company that had “first checkpoint, cure cancer?”
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Relative to my expectations for what a single smart person can get done, Stripe is pretty close to that hyperbole for me, though I know they had a few creative ways around requiring all the pieces to work prior to getting it out in the world historically.
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