> The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project.
I strongly agree with this! If you're working towards a product (and not just a hobby project) then these are crucial requirements. If they can be found out before writing any code, then they should be, since it will save time in the long run.
For me it's also the kind of thing that can lead to costly changes after the fact, which is prone to rub developers up the wrong way. It seems like the principle of phase containment might apply - if you found it early in the development cycle, then it would have been easier to fix.
There are lots of startup founders who do feel a bit sleazy, or like they're just faking it until they make it. You don't give that impression at all!
As others have said below, I think you should push your product a bit. It might not be perfect, but if you can talk it up a bit whilst accepting valid feedback, then you're more likely to come off as dedicated and earnest. People can then trust that the product is likely to head in the right direction under your care.
Strongly agreed! It doesn't just seem unfair, it is unfair.
I also think that there's much more celebration of "overcoming" disability or illness, rather than the much more sustainable (and difficult!) practice of changing your work patterns and lifestyle to live within your daily allotment of spoons.
Even if it does boil down to that, there might still be value in ranking the savings per service you buy in. Except for a core product, it is almost always going to be the case that buying in is cheaper than building it. However, having limited resources, it's valuable to work out what tools could give you the best value for money, and which others are a more marginal call (given the uncertainty about support work etc.)
It does seem obviously to be a spectrum. I only realised that I have some degree of aphantasia when I read an article on it.
I think there's also an element of things being "faint" in your mind's eye. For example, there's a McDonald's and horse racetrack that I drive by every day on my way to work. I can sort of visualise some constituent parts, but there are no details and there's no overall picture.
I also don't know how much of the visualisation is just me recalling (in abstract) what is there, since I am very familiar with it.
This just sounds like a bad/inappropriate use of a tool. I wouldn't think that a team of people working on unconnected items should have any meetings at all, let alone a daily stand-up.
As others have said, when you're working on a team where there is significant interplay or varied, related experience, they're really useful. We work on an OS and have members of the team who happen to have experience using infra and tooling. There's no way you would necessarily know this without saying "Oh, I was struggling with this bit of stats collection infra" and somebody else says "Yeah, I worked on that on x project, y years ago. Let's chat after stand-up."
There are obviously other ways to seed this kind of thing, but brief stand-ups seem a good way of doing it.
The other thing that we tend to do is just say "Oh, I did x that doesn't really relate to the project yesterday, but that's not very interesting" and leave it at that.
I strongly agree with this! If you're working towards a product (and not just a hobby project) then these are crucial requirements. If they can be found out before writing any code, then they should be, since it will save time in the long run.
For me it's also the kind of thing that can lead to costly changes after the fact, which is prone to rub developers up the wrong way. It seems like the principle of phase containment might apply - if you found it early in the development cycle, then it would have been easier to fix.