Re: Building a new community / content web application

Ummm... errr....

Awright, I feel obligated to bust your bubble.

If you are, as you say, “a newbie to web development,” and you (think that you) have come up with a remarkable new idea and “you don't want to say too much here” (because...) “you want to be the first one (in the whole great-big world!) :-O to do it....”

Please drink a 2-liter bottle of Reality Juice and call us in the morning.

Instead of assuming that “you are the first,” kindly save yourself some trouble and assume that you are not “the first.” Assume, instead, (and though it might be painful!) that you simply do not know that “you are not the first.”

Assume instead that “your idea is run-of-the-mill.” Assume that there are 10,000 other web-sites out there ... none of which you yet know about ... and that, no matter what you're trying to do now, you will not be (and therefore, do not have to be...) “the first.”

Believe it or not, that's an enormous weight off your shoulders!

“There are (almost) no truly-unique ideas in this world.” But there's always room for anyone who can Do It Better!

You Are, in other words, Among Good Friends. There's plenty-enough world out there for every one of us (and then some). Familiarize yourself, without fear, with everything that everyone-else is doing.

“Don't repeat it... trump it!” We Won't Mind!™ :-D

Right now, quite-frankly, you feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders ... “by gawd, you are The First!” ... when you quite-certainly (and no-matter-what-it-is) don't. So, let me lift that weight from your poor shoulders and let us all move forward from there. (It's Okay... No Harm, No Foul.) Remember, the world always wants “another mousetrap,” not “the first person on the planet who recognizes the need to catch a mouse.”

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Re^2: Building a new community / content web application by Sixtease (Friar) on Jul 31, 2008 at 18:36 UTC
What a nice post, really. I had to smile. I can imagine myself responding to my original post like this. :-) However, I lied a little. But just for simplicity. The idea is not mine but my friend's. He's one of the persons in the world who do have original ideas. But you're right still. There are attempts on the web to do something similar. We found them when we sought for a domain. :-) Nothing quite in the spirit where we would like to have it. We're Czech and the Czech web will be our primary focus. I am next to sure there's nothing quite like what we're planning out there in Czech. It doesn't matter if there are others running a similar service already because we don't know them (even after searching), so they didn't manage to take it where we would like. Our naïveté lends us a lot of charge and enthusiasm, and I think it may help us manage. If we won't, so be it. :-) I'm not 100% sure I still qualify for a newbie, maybe rookie would be more appropriate. So thanks for the concern, but we're into it. Do wish us luck. :-) I must also thank alexm for telling me about Getting Real. That was exactly what I needed to read. An amazing book. One of those that not only gives useful information but also motivation and enthusiasm. It helped me tremendously. use strict; use warnings; print "Just Another Perl Hacker\n";	[reply]
Re^2: Building a new community / content web application by Erez (Priest) on Jul 29, 2008 at 09:00 UTC
Assume instead that “your idea is run-of-the-mill.” Assume that there are 10,000 other web-sites out there ... and that, no matter what you're trying to do now, you will not be (and therefore, do not have to be...) “the first.” I fail to see how does that answer the OP question about Web-Development. The question isn't whether he found the next X-killer (where X == your social network of choice), but how to build a web application that will scale, otherwise he's building the next Twitter. Stop saying 'script'. Stop saying 'line-noise'. We have nothing to lose but our metaphors.	[reply]
Re^2: Building a new community / content web application by psini (Deacon) on Jul 28, 2008 at 16:59 UTC
sundialsvc4 ++ It's two days I'm following this thread trying to say what you said, but not finding the right words. Rule One: "Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man."	[reply]