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by bsandert 3544 days ago
To me this is a form of the Dunning-Kruger effect[0], where only somewhat informed people estimate the cost of a "0.1" (or POC) release without considering the famous "unknown unknowns" which may involve scaling, billing, 3rd party integrations, etc.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

1 comments

I find I've had to bar myself from thinking about many of these factors, after I realised how many projects I stop myself from pursuing because I know about the hard bits, and realise how many of my past projects I'd never have taken a shot at if I knew what was coming up and was thinking like that.

It's great to know, but often it's not so great if it leads to inaction...

E.g. if you have a "I could do that in a weekend" impulse, sometimes it's worth following that impulse. If you're right, you've spent a weekend building something potentially great. If you're wrong, you've spent a weekend learning about things you clearly didn't know in advance, and the lessons can often be very different from the objections you'd have throw up if you thought about it without doing, and sometimes what you learn may provide the impulses for another new idea.

But it's hard. E.g. my first impulse for anything that requires collecting money is how painful it is to deal with credit card processing and reporting and VAT and accounting, because I've done big complex billing systems with heavy reporting requirements, and compliance complexity etc.. It's very hard to put that impulse aside, and "just do it" and think about how to solve the payments afterwards. But that's how I did things he first few times I needed to handle payments.