Code Soloist #9: Go dark

There is a time to create and there is a time to share. You can’t do both at the same time, and you can’t do one exclusively. If all you did was create, nobody would know, and nothing would change as a result of all your effort. If all you did was share, you’d quickly run out of things worth sharing and people would notice. There are lots of folks in both camps. It’s easy to spot an overcommitted sharer who has forgotten how to shut up and innovate. It’s harder to spot an overtaxed creator who has never stopped working on something you’ve never heard of.

Schedule your creation and sharing periods like anything else in life. One must always precede the other. When you’re creating, shutup, when you’re sharing, close your IDE. Make sure you do both.

One of the more shared moments in recent memory, in our little world, started from this simple statement:

“I made something. http://howfuckedismydatabase.com”.

Notice how easy it is to share something when it really exists. Now try doing the same thing like this:

“I’m going to make something. http://howfuckedismydatabase.com”

Imagine the page is “under construction”. Feel the difference?

It’s not like social platforms changed the laws of nature. That suddenly it’s no longer true that the best things get noticed. That you have to have something to sell something. You might not like the fact that during your creation phase, you’ll lose “followers”, or “hits”, or whatever you’re tracking. That you won’t be in the conversation and possibly not first of mind. But there is an effortlessness that comes from having something real to share, and you won’t have to try so hard to get those things you’re after when you do.

Code Soloist is for single-person software development companies that are trying to start something big with their bare hands. In it, I try to impart whatever I’ve learned, for better or worse, doing the same thing badly.


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  1. danielcrenna posted this

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