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Monique Y. Mudama wrote:
> It's almost a truism that the first product, not the best product, is
> the one that succeeds in the market.

Absolutely not. The mac lost to Windows 3.0 and later products. The
German D2 cellphone service (now Vodafone) AFAIK lost its huge market
lead to T-Mobile. I'm sure there are more examples. It's power that
pushes the market, not being the first.

--
Do or do not. There is no try.
Yoda

Ulrich Hobelmann coughed up:
> Monique Y. Mudama wrote:
>> It's almost a truism that the first product, not the best product, is
>> the one that succeeds in the market.
>
> Absolutely not. The mac lost to Windows 3.0 and later products. The
> German D2 cellphone service (now Vodafone) AFAIK lost its huge market
> lead to T-Mobile. I'm sure there are more examples. It's power that
> pushes the market, not being the first.

Yes, yes. But this is all to the side of the real issue.

The issue as I presented has to do with time-to-market. Time-to-market can
often be the most important concern, whether you are the first videotape
machine, the 5th videotape machine or the last buggywhip.

There is almost always a "race" to market of some kind going on, most
particularly with startups, which live and die by the merest of
thresholds...

--
Doesn't /anyone/ know where I can find a credit card company that
emails me the minute something is charged to my account?

On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 03:17:25 GMT, "Thomas G. Marshall"
<. com> wrote or quoted
:

>There is almost always a "race" to market of some kind going on, most
>particularly with startups, which live and die by the merest of
>thresholds...

People seem to think that writing crappy code will get you finished
faster. I think that is rarely the case. The firmer your foundation,
the faster you can build the house.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

Roedy Green wrote:

> On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 03:17:25 GMT, "Thomas G. Marshall"
> <. com> wrote or quoted
> :
>
>>There is almost always a "race" to market of some kind going on, most
>>particularly with startups, which live and die by the merest of
>>thresholds...
>
> People seem to think that writing crappy code will get you finished
> faster. I think that is rarely the case. The firmer your foundation,
> the faster you can build the house.

By pushing the 'beta' to market you (the deployer) can..
- Save money on testing by getting the end user to do the
bulk of it for you, and..
- Start making money on 'updates' sooner..

This seems to be the strategy of a particular OS
maker that is currently dominant in the market.

On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 06:43:25 GMT, Andrew Thompson
<> wrote or quoted :

>By pushing the 'beta' to market you (the deployer) can..
>- Save money on testing by getting the end user to do the
> bulk of it for you, and..
>- Start making money on 'updates' sooner..

Not doing your testing is a separate issue from writing crappy code.

By crappy I mainly mean "unmaintainable". By "unmaintainable' I mean
all the tricks people use to make code hard to change. See
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/unmain.html
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

"Monique Y. Mudama" <> writes:

> Did they make a lot of money before they faded into obscurity? More
> than their competitors at the time?

Yes, but then they would be the *first* to succeed in the market, not
the *only*. And it's a no-brainer that the first have a better success
than their non-existing (or niche market) competitors.

"Thomas G. Marshall" <. com> writes:

> LOL. Point. Which is why I responded (in comp.object) that there is a time
> frame required for the statement to be complete.

Yes but that's to trick with numbers. If you had a stock that rose
rapidly for five days before plummeting like a rock, if you restricted
your reporting to those five days you could claim that the stock had a
steady increase in value - but the whole story paints a different
picture.

Monique Y. Mudama wrote:
> ["Followup-To:" header set to comp.lang.java.programmer.] On
> 2005-09-30, Thomas G. Marshall penned:
>
>>Have you ever seen a customer in a startup situation that needs to
>>get a product that works to market as incredibly soon as possible?
>>I have. Repeatedly. In this case, the emphasis is getting the damn
>>thing out the door. Often that bites the customer hard, but
>>sometimes that only bites the customer later. Sometimes getting the
>>thing to market regardless of the internal invisible quality of the
>>code is the only way he can get his company to the next stage!!!!
>>
>
>
> It's almost a truism that the first product, not the best product, is
> the one that succeeds in the market.
>

Why isn't Wordstar the predominant word processor? Or at least WordPerfect?

The product that succeeds is frequently neither best nor first.

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen coughed up:
> "Thomas G. Marshall"
> <. com> writes:
>
>> LOL. Point. Which is why I responded (in comp.object) that there
>> is a time frame required for the statement to be complete.
>
> Yes but that's to trick with numbers. If you had a stock that rose
> rapidly for five days before plummeting like a rock, if you restricted
> your reporting to those five days you could claim that the stock had a
> steady increase in value - but the whole story paints a different
> picture.

And there /is/ no "whole story" either. Until the company is out of
business.


--
Having a dog that is a purebred does not qualify it for breeding. Dogs
need to have several generations of clearances for various illnesses
before being bred. If you are breeding dogs without taking care as to
the genetic quality of the dog (again, being purebred is *not* enough),
you are what is known as a "backyard breeder" and are part of the
problem. Most of the congenital problems of present day dogs are
traceable directly to backyard breeding. Spay or neuter your pet
responsibly, and don't just think that you're somehow the exception and
can breed a dog without taking the care described.

Roedy Green coughed up:
> On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 03:17:25 GMT, "Thomas G. Marshall"
> <. com> wrote or quoted
>>
>
>> There is almost always a "race" to market of some kind going on, most
>> particularly with startups, which live and die by the merest of
>> thresholds...
>
> People seem to think that writing crappy code will get you finished
> faster. I think that is rarely the case. The firmer your foundation,
> the faster you can build the house.

Totally incorrect.

The firmer your foundation, the more *solidly* you can build your house.
You can build in no time if you don't do the extensive design. If you're
gonna try to argue against the time-to-market speedup, you're gonna have to
pick a metaphor that /doesn't/ make my argument for me.



--
Having a dog that is a purebred does not qualify it for breeding. Dogs
need to have several generations of clearances for various illnesses
before being bred. If you are breeding dogs without taking care as to
the genetic quality of the dog (again, being purebred is *not* enough),
you are what is known as a "backyard breeder" and are part of the
problem. Most of the congenital problems of present day dogs are
traceable directly to backyard breeding. Spay or neuter your pet
responsibly, and don't just think that you're somehow the exception and
can breed a dog without taking the care described.