[HN Gopher] When to Copy Ideas, When to Steal Ideas
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       When to Copy Ideas, When to Steal Ideas
        
       Author : davnicwil
       Score  : 42 points
       Date   : 2020-03-18 09:38 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (davnicwil.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (davnicwil.com)
        
       | gumby wrote:
       | There's even more to this. davnicwil says just use the same
       | sponge cake and excel in your area of expertise: the icing. Good
       | advice.
       | 
       | Alternatively, if you are a "fast follower": after the other
       | company has evangelized the new feature (sponge cake) and started
       | to build an audience for it, you can see what features seem to
       | really matter and either make a simplified one or one that
       | addresses the limitations of it.
       | 
       | A great example is the iPod, the famously lame latecomer ("no
       | wifi, less space than a nomad. Lame"). Apple launched into a
       | market which was already developing (tiny MP3 players), and not
       | only put their own "icing" on it (e.g. design) but addressed a
       | couple of the fundamental problems with the existing ones (the
       | complexity of getting music into them and navigating to find what
       | you want). So they weren't even really competing with the other
       | players.
        
       | phsource wrote:
       | > Copy [means] to borrow an idea for its known useful results;
       | steal [means] to take ownership of an idea and extend it to
       | create some novel result.
       | 
       | > Copy the same sponge any cake could use, then using your own
       | creative talents as icing to make something uniquely great
       | (steal) in the areas that make a difference in your product's
       | niche... Steal strategy! Copy tactics
       | 
       | As an engineer working on product, this is good advice. It's
       | often appealing to reinvent the wheel and succumb to "not-built-
       | here" symptom. Especially when it comes to questions like "what
       | stack and language to use", often, the best answer is "whatever
       | has worked before." Rather, what's worth reinventing is the
       | actual features or user-facing aspects of the product.
       | 
       | Don't go crazy making your own global Javascript store: just roll
       | Redux or MobX. As someone who loves engineering challenges, I
       | find myself reining myself in a lot on this at Wanderlog
       | (https://wanderlog.com). But I realize whether we're successful
       | or not isn't going to be our technical infrastructure. That needs
       | be solid, but what really matters are the little things we can do
       | to wow travelers
        
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       (page generated 2020-03-18 23:00 UTC)