Experimenting with creating web apps in the time it takes to write a blog post

http://chestergrant.posterous.com/experimenting-with-creating-web-apps-in-the-t#

by chegra84 • 15 years ago

17 5 15 years ago

chestergrant.posterous.com

martinshen• 15 years ago

There are only a few web apps I think can be useful within this 3 hour construct. I think it's much better to develop a web app that takes about a weekend or maybe 2 to complete. You get something with a lot more value and can truly extend your ideas outward. Furthermore, a weekend still provides the construct of "fast."

Building a web app in 3 hours will leave you at best with something like threewords.me or its clones. While those can go viral, they rely heavily on luck. Why not spend 2 hours and build a beautiful and captivating launch page for an idea that would take you a weekend or two to build. Then, spend 1 hour reposting it everywhere and try to get feedback. This way, you can see if the concept itself gets any traction.

olegp• 15 years ago

We would like to think it should be possible to create useful webapps in Akshell within 3 hours and are working to create a set of libraries and standard components to make this possible. See our (old) screencast for an example: http://vimeo.com/11831303

jjm• 15 years ago

This is a good exercise to help train yourself to strip out the less important ideas/features. Do it enough and apply the new learnings toward a bigger project.

goblin89• 15 years ago

While I agree that it's probably impossible to produce a whole web application in 3 hours, I think the point here is more about incremental delivery_. Note that in the post, OP is actually talking about 3-hour features, not entire apps (after step ‘show to people’ you can go back and develop another 3-hour feature, if you like). And I doubt there exists a web application (or almost any piece of software, really) that couldn't be developed this way.

.. _: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?IncrementalDelivery

Problems, however, arise when your idea requires specific domain knowledge which you haven't got yet; it's likely that you'll need some time to become comfortable in this particular area. Though I doubt it should necessarily be counted as time spent on app development.

And there's always some in-brain idea development. Say, you have an idea of blogging via email. You cook this idea inside for a few days, working out some details in background, then sit down, code for a three hours, and boom, you have posterous. Then you see that people don't care about email blogging, but they care about bells and whistles, so you sit another 3 hours and create basic skinning support. It's better than when after two weekends on email-blogging you discover that you were going in wrong direction. (Of course, I know nothing about real Posterous development, I just tried to clarify.)

Also, I think it's generally useful to be able to produce something in 3 hours. You need to keep your tools hot & ready.

jp• 15 years ago

I can make a sandwich in ten seconds. Am I a baker or someone who makes a sandwich ?

Experimenting with creating web apps in the time it takes to write a blog post

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