[bruce511]

So here's the thing. It takes work and effort to get attention.

"if you build it, they will come". Never has one cliche been so exactly wrong.

Programmers, myself included, believe(d) that the code is the product. That the code will speak for itself. That being "better" (for some definition of better) is enough. If I build it, they will come.

The truth though, the code is about 10% of the effort to make a successful product. It is much more work, and frankly harder work, to to the marketing to get the product in front of the customer. It is then much more work to turn that into a sale (if your work is commercial.)

For decades I've heard programmers lament that they do all the hard work, they deserve the lion's share, all those guys do is sell it.

So here's the thing. Your code does not just "get attention". You earn that by investing time, and money but mostly time, in getting that attention.

That means going to where your target market is. Showing them you can add value to the group (I spent a lot of time answering unrelated questions.) showing how your offering can add value to the group. You do not "get" attention, you have to _earn_ it.

So, if you want your product to get more attention, then by extension you need to personally get more attention. You need to find your target group, be useful, be helpful, engage with them, built trust.

So you've made a tool for people without a smart-phone. OK, not a market I would have chosen[1], but that's not relevant. The thing you need to figure out is how to reach those people. Since they are not online, you will need to reach them offline. You need to go to where they are, not expect them to find you.

[1] choosing a market first, one you have a strategy to reach, then making a product is usually better than the other way around. Not least because joining a community, and adding value there for s while, before making a product, builds trust. It also helps you build a product they will find useful, not just something you randomly thought of.

This is life; through failure we learn more, through persistence we achieve.

[nonrandomstring]

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

It's true that effort helps success, and working for visibility is as important as working on making something great.

But sometimes life is just arbitrary.

Anyone who has worked in the "pop" media knows this. Artists pour their life and soul into films, symphonies and albums that get no listeners. They practice guitar for 10,000 hours and agonise over each note of a composition. They push and nothing happens, and they live in perpetual hope of "being discovered" in a world of overwhelming over-supply. One day some kid sticks a bangin' donk on a boing sound and it goes straight to the top of the charts with no explanation.

Unfair? Unjust?

Not really, if you allow for the essential randomness of things. Perhaps we put far too much belief in our ability to value things, and that includes marketing and communication as much as "quality" of design and execution.

[suoduandao2]

Right, but you can't jump to the top of the charts without sticking the donk on the boing first (I assume that means uploading an original track?). I've seen a lot of references to the role luck plays in success, and I don't mean to diminish that role, but you can't get lucky without putting yourself out there. Sticking a donk on a boing takes real effort, as does any other 'shot on net' that one might take.

[rizpanjwani]

You can’t win the lottery without buying it first but still a lottery is a lottery…

[suoduandao2]

Which game you play is certainly a factor. If you like composing original music that may be a game worth playing even if the odds are no better than an actual lottery.

[bruce511]

>> Unfair

Of course its unfair. Life is unfair. There is quite literally nothing in life that is "fair".

Fairness is the worst hope you can have. If you are waiting for life to treat you fair, then you will die disappointed. And if you are reading this, then likely you are so far ahead of fair that fairness can only be a step back.

If you have success, then the best thing you can do is spread some unfairness around. Help others up, you can't help everyone, so it's not fair, but it's the best you can do.

Give someone an unfair leg up, give someone an unfair opportunity. Pass on some of the unfairness you already have.

[nonrandomstring]

Almost. I love the bold poetic of how you put it. But let's please s/fair/equal/.

The vernacular use of fair means something more than "equality".

The idea that life could be equal is patently ridiculous, and self-evidently undesirable. Equality is the worst hope you can have.

> likely you are so far ahead of fair that fairness can only be a step back.

That's a bit too pared down for my tastes. It supposes a linear, monotonic, single dimensional quality of life upon which we all agree. None exists. The best candidate - per capita GDP - is fatally flawed, as discussed here in many vibrant exchanges. As if some (disastrous) communist type reckoning could "reset" the world to parity? No, of course it never could. For one thing we'd all be in different physical locations, different ages, mental abilities, and so on, each dimension having its attendant pros and cons. In such a transformation many aspects of "Our western life" would actually improve, and not to see that would be parochial.

I'd say, if you're reading this; you're probably in an position, intellectually, to appreciate how an imposed "equality" would radically change your life, and make it worse in many ways but better in some others. Such a thought ought to shine light on the richness of life and culture that makes this unfair world such a beautiful place.

What I love about your comment is that compassion is not made a dependent of any schoolboy ideologies about equality or fairness.

> If you have success, spread some unfairness around. Help others up. you can't help everyone, so it's not fair, but it's the best you can do.

Absolutely. Bravo.

> Give someone an unfair leg up, give someone an unfair opportunity. Pass on some of the unfairness you already have.

I find this "empowering others" an ideal that resonates with me as a subversive stance against brain-dead systems that hold people back so that the chosen few might rule. It's spreading "fairness" by spreading "unfairness". Tactical dissemination of knowledge (fairness redistribution) is, for me, a core true hacker value. Code is one of the most extraorinary ways to transfer power. Like blatantly telling my students how to game and hack the Kobayashi Maru dreamed up by "well meaning" but ignorant administrators.

[HWR_14]

> Unfair? Unjust? Not really

I'm not sure why you think that's neither unjust nor unfair. All you said is "it's random". I'm not sure why "it's random" implies it's not unfair or unjust.

[wizofaus]

Randomness applies to everybody. "Unfair" is more often used to describe a situation where when those in category A do the same things as those in category B, but only those in one category get rewarded for it. But which category you're in to start with may well be down to random chance.

[HWR_14]

> "Unfair" is more often used to describe a situation where when those in category A do the same things as those in category B, but only those in one category get rewarded for it.

That's exactly the situation here. There are "lucky" and "unlucky" people. Those are your two categories.

[kevinmalone]

Unfair and unlucky are different concepts. Randomness could be perceived as lucky and unlucky, but that’s not what they’re saying. Randomness, if truly random, is as fair as it gets.

[pc86]

The randomness of life is only unfair or unjust if you deserve fame and accolades proportional to your effort simply because you put the effort in. You don't.

[winnit]

That depends whether you consider things must either be just or unjust or whether they can simply not be just, without being an injustice.

[HWR_14]

I don't see what the distinction you're making is. It seems things are either just or unjust. That seems like standard logic.

[winnit]

There can exist a third category in which things are neither just nor unjust. It really depends on whether your logic system is two-valued or many. There isn’t any universal standard. Can’t you see that there are distinctions in strength between trust, don’t trust and distrust? If you’ve never dealt with someone before, you might not trust them. But you wouldn’t distrust them without specific reason.

[anonymouse008]

Here’s the deal - if you build (great things) they will come. The problem is people aren’t building great things, period.

Really think on it for more than a second - all the products that are “huge” are scaled through this “sales and marketing are more important.”

If your initial MVP doesn’t stop people in their tracks, turn around and say “I will cry if I can’t buy this.” Then go home, dust off and try again. Otherwise, yes, you will slog with the rest in SGA and CAC games.

scale isn’t the only way to success.

[bruce511]

>> The problem is people aren’t building great things, period.

Oh, I think they are. You just haven't seen them (yet?) and you probably never will, because their creators are slaving over perfection, somehow expecting the randomverse to spot it.

The winners are the ones who accepted imperfection, who were brave enough to show the incomplete, who were prepared to make the effort to do more than just write code.

VHS over betamax, Windows 95 over OS/2, Apple 2/mac over amiga. Our history is littered with marketing over product.

For every success there are 10 guys with a story about how their effort was better, how the winner was rubbish. But the winner always won the marketing game.

Too many coders are playing the perfect game of checkers, in a world where everyone else is playing an average game of chess.

[anonymouse008]

I love this very much. Yes, so many creators never even show their work - I'm guilty and a multiple offender here - but the error is a far cry from the 'marketing' or 'product manager' position that's usually portrayed.

> VHS over betamax, Windows 95 over OS/2, Apple 2/mac over amiga. Our history is littered with marketing over product.

While these are tantalizing examples on the surface - if you dig deeper, you'll see they are all failures to give a damn about the end user. I'll just take the first at first level:

Betamax didn't allow for competition in the production of the tape player, thus being hundreds of dollars more for marginal improvement in picture quality. They ignored the end user over partnerships - aka they didn't build something great.

I'll step in your shoes and say one could argue that Apple proves that marketing matters, but that too, misses the big picture - Apple's iPod specs may have been less technically proficient, and though there was marketing - the very first time you felt aluminum and the glossy plastic in your hand - it was a completely different world of experience, in spite of its technical standing - that product was just great, period.

[wbsun]

> The problem is people aren’t building great things, period.

+1000!

Praising is cheap.

[hypertele-Xii]

Sounds like advertizing gospel to me.

It implies that people aren't actively looking for better solutions to their problems, which is just blatantly false.

If industries spent all of their marketing budget on research and development, we'd live in a very different world. Maybe even a better one. A world where companies aren't asking "how can we fool people into buying more of what we're already making" and instead ask "what can we make that's so good it practically sells itself?"

Quality always rises to the top. That's a law of nature.

[coldtea]

>It implies that people aren't actively looking for better solutions to their problems, which is just blatantly false.

No, they don't.

The majority go with the defaults, and most of the rest stick to the first thing that "works for them".

If they try something else it's usually because of either mass promotion (like with Java in the late 90s) or hype by a smaller team of early adopters (like with Node and such), not by patiently looking and evaluating solutions alone.

>Quality always rises to the top. That's a law of nature.

That's not even close to a law of nature.

In fact, "crap rises to the top" might be closer to being that. I mean, if you want a blatant example, see the music top-10.

[bruce511]

Indeed, marketing beats quality everytime. Vhs/beta, windows/Linux/OS2 and so on infinitum.

[baxtr]

This topic is well researched. Those who actively look and are open to new solutions are called “Early adopters” and are just a tiny minority of the entire target audience.

But even they won’t find you if you don’t have an SEO-optimized page, for example, to give you a somewhat extreme example. Just doing nothing and waiting for someone to come is not an option.

[baxtr]

PS: I just realized that doing a project and not telling people is in essence just like having an idea in your head.

[arinlen]

> It implies that people aren't actively looking for better solutions to their problems, which is just blatantly false.

Not really. Think about it for a moment: are there more people actively searching for better solutions to each and every single problem they may or may not know they have? Or are there more people like you and me who go about their day just fine completely oblivious that there might be out there a far better way of doing things, or not even bothering to spend a second to address some nuisance they have?

> If industries spent all of their marketing budget on research and development, we'd live in a very different world.

Yes, it would be a world where fortunes were spent on R&D whose outcome benefitted no one at all because no one ever heard about the outcome.

Also, as a corollary to your anti-marketing stance, multiple redundant R&D projects would be wasting resources developing stuff that was already developed and reinventing the wheel primarily because no one knew that it was already done.

[hypertele-Xii]

It's almost as if you believed that a world without advertizing wouldn't propagate any information.

[arinlen]

> It's almost as if you believed that a world without advertizing wouldn't propagate any information.

I'm sure you are able to understand that actively spreading information is far more effective in getting the message out than sitting on your rear-end expecting that people are suddenly magically aware of you and things just drop from the sky onto your lap.

[hypertele-Xii]

If your ancestors had sat on their asses waiting for food to fall from the sky, you wouldn't be here. Clearly, exploration is in our DNA.

Sitting on your ass looking at ads is what advertizers want you to do. And it's in their interest to foster the belief that you couldn't survive without it.

[throwaway4good]

“ Quality always rises to the top. That's a law of nature.”

That is definitely not a law of nature.

[Jensson]

Depends on how big the quality difference is, if it is big enough then your product will grow exponentially via word of mouth, like Google did for example. That is just simple math, if you are good enough that people want to tell others about it then it will grow.

Problem is that today most technological needs are already filled by good programs so adding significant new value to peoples lives is extremely hard, so it is very unlikely that you can make naturally growing programs today on a tiny budget.

[necovek]

Google initially targetted a niche (geeks and nerds like us) with no-fuss, no-ads search experience where weight of the result depended mostly on how many citations it had. They were very present at conferences related to free software, for instance (which I'd consider investment in marketing).

And this group was the one in charge of "fixing their relatives' computers", so we were all too happy to tell them about Google: this is how word-of-mouth worked for them.

[hypertele-Xii]

Then why do all social animals organize into hierarchies?

[watwut]

First of all, it is not correct statement about all social animals.

And second, hierarchical organization does not mean at all quality is on top.

[hypertele-Xii]

Which social animal does not organize into a hierarchy?

Social animals organize into hierarchies precisely because hierarchies bubble quality to the top.

[aoanla]

The difficulty with this argument is what we mean by "quality". It's tautological to state that hierarchies select for "qualities that enable you to be higher on the hierarchy"; it's much more debatable as to the nature of those qualities (and, indeed, that the existence of the hierarchy itself doesn't change the fitness surface, so that the advantageous qualities are different to what they might have been without it). See, eg, the amount of energy antlered deer (especially males) expend on having large, healthy antlers, purely to compete with other male deer. "Having large antlers" is a "quality" that has very little adaptive value outside of the conditions created by the fact of a hierarchy itself.

[watwut]

Lions for example - they live in aliances. Wild boars. Quite a lot of social animals live actually in families. It is hierarchy insofar adults are raising the children, but the children leave as adults and make own families. There is not much bubbling up and down.

Also, in herd animals like sheep the hierarchy consist on basically more aggressive individual eating fist and getting what they want. But, the other members dont follow them and there is no meaning of leadership. Just that, if you are stronger and beat others, you can eat first or pick place to sleep.

> Social animals organize into hierarchies precisely because hierarchies bubble quality to the top.

They don't. In business, it can be "cheapest" or "lies the most convincingly" or "has the right connections".

Even among humans, the quality that fairy often bubbles on top is violence. You see that everywhere in the world. In Chechenia it is Kadyrov and his quality was "born to correct dad and already have proven he is ruthless when dad dies". The quality that got Adolf Hitler on top was "good speaker, able to channel fear and hate".

Those are extreme examples, but I wanted something super clear. What bubbles on top is what bubbles on top. It can occasionally be quality, but it can be host of other things too.

[msrenee]

If you've ever watched a herd of horses, you'd know that's not true. Dominance bubbles to the top. Pushiness bubbles to the top. If the animal is also a decent leader, then great. A lot of the time it's insecure and too busy trying to maintain its position and the rest of the herd ends up harried and banged up.

Seen it in dogs too, seen it a million times in people. Those are more artificial situations though.

[vineyardmike]

Look to every world leader. Is it apparent, agreed upon, or even reasonable to assume they’re the “quality” for their locale? No, they’re the best at marketing, or “campaigning”.

[jeffreygoesto]

Counter example: VHS

[rsecora]

Not really, VHS was similar to Betamax. Beta has a slightly better recording format than VHS due to resolution (250 lines vs. 240 lines). Both same scanline ratio.

The misconception is people confuses Betamax with Betacam, (both from Sony). Betacam was the Sony format for broadcasters, and the one with high quality (sound and picture). But bloody expensive.

Betamax lost due two to reasons. (1)tapes can only record 1 hour. Not enough for most recordings. Sony addressed the wrong market. (2) Price and retail distribution.

In other words, Betamax lost because VHS has a better market fit, and the market choose the technology that allowed to have theater movies in the video rental store.

(I was a Beta owner back in the 80s).

[jeffreygoesto]

Great explanation, thank you! I did not know the difference.

Guess then the point is that there is not one single scalar "quality" and things are not one-dimensional.

[Nowado]

It would be the same world in which countries don't spend on armies. It's the same exact thing.

[Lurkars]

Yes I think you're totally right. That doesn't change the fact, that I just really don't like marketing and don't want to invest the time. Of course it's naive and not totally right, but to some point I would say, I am immune to advertising. If I need something, I do research if there is something valuable. If someone wants to sell me something, in the end I am even more skeptical about the product. Anyways, I didn't thought my post will get that much attention, it was more for my self-compassion. Because I know, how I at least COULD try to fix the issue. But I just don't want to. From another comment here:

> but they don't want take the required steps to get that attentions

In the end, it comes down to this. So yes, there is now solution. I want to get the benefit without investment because I dream of a world not existing where everyone would do research to find the best.

[bruce511]

>> That doesn't change the fact, that I just really don't like marketing and don't want to invest the time

Exactly. And you don't need to. No one says you _have_ to market. But marketing leads to attention. So I think you know the cause effect here.

>> . I want to get the benefit without investment because I dream of a world not existing where everyone would do research to find the best.

I'm not sure I can say this without being a dick, which is a pity, because I'm not trying to be a dick. I'm saying this out of a place of respect.

There are around 8 billion people on earth. I promise you that if I did all the research I'm pretty sure (statistically) your projects are not the best. There's an even chance they are not even average.

Plus, I'm guessing there are likely 100 projects that do what your do. Should I do a deep dive into each one. Do a comparative analysis? 1 hour on each? Say a month's full time job? Repeat for every bit of software I've ever installed?

Did you install each BSD build and every Linux distribution, and every other OS out there before you selected one for your computer? Did you try Oberon or reactOS? Surely you did your own research for this most critical part of computing?

Of course not. We outsource our research. We Google. We solicit the opinion of others. We use whatever is convenient, available, and in front of us.

Me, I did research. I decided that people who were prepared to put effort into marketing would make a product that better fitted my needs, because they are showing interest in customers.

Again, I say this not to be a dick. You have choices. You understand cause and effect. You are welcome to do the work, or you are welcome to labour in obscurity. It's your choice.

But make no mistake, you are not doing your own research, and you are not making the best product. I'm sure you are making things with value, but if you don't get it out there, we'll, the result is well understood.

[Lurkars]

Thanks, your not a dick at all with your comment. But of course I want to differentiate a bit. I have written about my two examples because there are only the two. I am not complaining about attention due to quality, bit attention of existence. And I am talking explicit about specialised projects with a core audience. To stay with your OS example: you're developing MacOS and everyone is only taking about Windows and Linux. But I still think this is not a good metaphor. And how do you outsource research? It's only possible because others did.

In case of my Gloomhaven app, I only really complain about my posts on Reddit don't be as visible as from the ONE other app.

In case of my hardware token: there didn't exists any kind of this, at least as cheap OSS project (it run on a 10€ M5Stack, currently only with battery pack for longer time but anyway). And the attention I wanted was, that some people see the potential and bring it to a real product. It was and is my first real C hardware project and as hobbyist, I just wanted someone with expertise in that métier grab my project and optimize it. I knew that my code was not good, because I have no expertise. But I also knew nothing like this existed and I thought it would be very useful.

My other projects? I don't care, I make all for fun, I have personal benefits of it, so I don't care. I also don't care about the named one in that direction. I am proud of myself and my GH app still get more appreciation than expected ever, so at all I am happy with all. Just a bit jealous yesterday and wrote about it. Never thought about getting so much resonance to it. And as already mentioned, I know I can change something to do more marketing, but a big thing missing: I don't sell a product here. And not complaining about getting famous around 8 billion people.

[andai]

In the last paragraph I think lies the key: attention makes you uncomfortable? So it sounds like you have an internal conflict where you both want and don't want attention at the same time.

Maybe I am similar, I am very reluctant to promote my work, I don't want too much attention.

I actually briefly worked a job doing social media marketing where it was my job to create attention grabbing content. I had some moderate success there, but the more I succeeded the more I was overwhelmed, I really did not enjoy having to deal with so many messages every day and gave up the work very quickly. Part of me liked the attention, but a bigger part didn't want it.

tl;dr: I am an introvert, sounds like you are too, maybe some successful introverts can share their advice with us.

[Lurkars]

From my understanding, I won't say about myself that I am an introvert. Like I don't feel uncomfortable on a stage or talking to people. It's more like I just don't have a need to stay in focus or like getting much attention. That's maybe part of the problem too. Like someone else mentioned, you cannot seperate completely the attention of my project from my person, but I would like to. So it's not directly that I am uncomfortable with attention. But first of all I think one have to deserve it. It's often the problem, like the loudest get more attention, besides they shouldn't get it. Difficult to say all, most comments pointed more the problem out: I am really in between, like to want attention and on the other side not.

[baxtr]

One of the best comments I have ever read on HN. Thanks. And: I fully agree!

[arinlen]

Outstanding comment. Thank you for investing your time writing such a gem.