F– up Fast


“We did all kinds of dumb, stupid things. But our unofficial slogan was, “F—up fast.” Make mistakes rapidly, learn from them, and move past them.”

Caterina Fake, Flickr Co-Founder. (via BrainSparks)

I love this mentality. One of the most beautiful parts of building web apps is the ability to constantly update and fix and change. To constantly release.

I’ve seen a lot of great ideas crumble up and die, unreleased apps of genius that will never see the light of day. What better way to learn “what works” then by letting your users tell you. I love the Flickr interface, and you can tell its a constantly shifting landscape. Its fun to find new things to do every time you visit. It’s better to make mistakes and learn to shift and jive then retain an expectation that your app will ever be perfect.

I do think, before I eat my words, that a distinction has to be made between making mistakes and making buggy untested crap. Test, prod, poke, finesse and fix your code. Don’t release something that doesn’t work, but don’t wait to release something until the 100000 features you have planned are built. Don’t be afraid to do something stupid, the fact is – we all do something stupid sometimes. Assume somewhere near the worst, and get over it.

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