This article might be interesting, and I'm not against AI use. I am not interested in AI slop though, and I immediately lost interest in the banner photo with nonsense text in it.
I wonder how the indie/entrepreneur space is doing nowadays. I tried to do it myself but never really got anywhere this was back in 2016. Whenever I go on sites/subreddits around this topic a lot of the posts just seem to be about generating clout/some fake revenue numbers/screenshot of earnings. It's like entrepreneurs selling to each other.
I suppose nowadays it's probably around LLM wrappers, photo generation, video generation services... there were those niche ones in the past like the teacher with her bingo cards maker
It's still in my mind as I don't like waiting for a paycheck, just wondering how the space is doing nowadays
There is a book called "Talent is overrated" it essentially says, you need to 1) invest time, 2) do targeted practice, and 3) have a mentor, who helps you in targeted practice. Practice alone is not enough, it must be targeted at 1) what is relevant and/or 2) where your biggest weakness is at the moment.
How is IndieHackers doing since being independent? I used to use it quite a bit but it seemed like recently it's focused more on articles, similar to Starter Story I guess, which makes a ton of money so I can't blame you for going that route, than the forum (which I can't even figure out how to get to anymore). But then again, the forum had quite a lot of promotion and spam that got boring to read after a while.
> The difference between being good and being great isn’t talent or formal training, but the invisible practice that happens when you're just living life.
Pure nonsense.
Necessary != sufficient, and honestly neither are demonstrated in the anecdotes.
The thing that doesn't click in articles like this is the advice section afterwards. Do you think the people described thought about how to increase their practice surface area? No, they were simply /interested/. And part of the reason they were interested was because of natural talent! Do you want to know how to increase your practice surface area? Find things you're interested in.
But the reality is that many people just aren't as interested in anything as some people are interested in something. And that's okay. The real advice is to learn to accept yourself as you are, whether you're an obsessive or not.
Man, talk about out the opposite of a growth mindset. What's that called? Stagnation mindset? Mediocrity mindset? How depressing.
People can change and get better at things. They do it all the time. Plenty of people _do_ actively think about things like how to increase their surface area to improve, because _they want to get better_.
I like the idea of the article. However, I wonder what are ways to increase the practice surface area for programming / software engineering?
I can think of various high-Level activities such as analyzing systems we interact with on a day-to-day basis. However, I cannot come up with exercises that would improve my code itself.
I'm currently building the product for my startup - I'm hoping to launch in the next few months. I'm very grateful to IndieHackers for showing me how to make that happen, but when I look at the website now, I can't help but feel that it's jumped the shark.
At the top of the page, there's a link labelled Starting Up that takes you to a page with links to articles that taken together form a Guide to Starting Up. Those links, and those articles, represent the entire value of the IndieHackers website. There's a lot of value in those articles, but the rest of the website provides no value.
Members of the IndieHackers community talk about their 'shovel companies' - typically things like AI-powered marketing services, or the like. This is nonsense: the real shovel companies in the SaaS space are cloud providers and payment processors. Indie hackers claiming to have made a shovel company aren't Levi Strauss selling sturdy trousers to prospectors, they're urchins offering to help dig in plots in exchange for a bit of bread.
IndieHackers itself has become one of these urchins, exhibiting increasing desperation to show ongoing relevance. Skill at software development isn't the thing that's holding most indie hackers back; what's holding them back is that they don't know any good problems to solve. There's an awful lot of money out there waiting to be spent on simple CRUD apps that don't yet exist. You don't need to push the limit of what's possible with computers to make money; you just need to go out into the world to find an actual problem.
Nice succinct read outlining something I think a lot of people are aware of, but don’t often describe. It’s my first time reading Indie Hacker, and I think there’s nice balance of quality, depth, and brevity that you’re trying to strike?
I recently watched a YouTube on cultural communication pathways, and there was a comparison of “engineered communication” being a top down approach, as opposed to a gardening approach to communication being a bottoms up approach; one being predictable with measurable outcomes, and the other being organic and unpredictable. In gardening we plant seeds, help them germinate, watch them grow. A lot of the articles on Indie hackers seem to be planting seeds, which I appreciate. I wish HN would see value in a range of articles, and not skew to preferring engineered rigid predictability. Pardon the overstatement but you get my drift.
A lot of the article goes into trying to "multitask" your practice - building it into some minimal viable practice routine.
I would urge caution around this - in fact - deliberate practice is probably worth 10 times this. There's a reason people tend to plateau early in their efforts to master something. Once your brain figures out how to put the skill on autopilot you're going to find your rate of improvement significantly slower.
It's not just about the time you put in - it's about the type of practice you put in.
18 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 37.1 ms ] threadWhen you become obsessed with A, your whole life becomes a practice of A.
I suppose nowadays it's probably around LLM wrappers, photo generation, video generation services... there were those niche ones in the past like the teacher with her bingo cards maker
It's still in my mind as I don't like waiting for a paycheck, just wondering how the space is doing nowadays
Pure nonsense.
Necessary != sufficient, and honestly neither are demonstrated in the anecdotes.
Burn out speedrun 101.
If you want to keep your sanity, you need to find your own passion, not try to emulate others (especially with crazy routines like the examples).
There's some truth there, but Charles Bukowski said it much better and more succinctly with, "Don't try." [1]
1: https://poets.org/poem/so-you-want-be-writer
But the reality is that many people just aren't as interested in anything as some people are interested in something. And that's okay. The real advice is to learn to accept yourself as you are, whether you're an obsessive or not.
People can change and get better at things. They do it all the time. Plenty of people _do_ actively think about things like how to increase their surface area to improve, because _they want to get better_.
I can think of various high-Level activities such as analyzing systems we interact with on a day-to-day basis. However, I cannot come up with exercises that would improve my code itself.
At the top of the page, there's a link labelled Starting Up that takes you to a page with links to articles that taken together form a Guide to Starting Up. Those links, and those articles, represent the entire value of the IndieHackers website. There's a lot of value in those articles, but the rest of the website provides no value.
Members of the IndieHackers community talk about their 'shovel companies' - typically things like AI-powered marketing services, or the like. This is nonsense: the real shovel companies in the SaaS space are cloud providers and payment processors. Indie hackers claiming to have made a shovel company aren't Levi Strauss selling sturdy trousers to prospectors, they're urchins offering to help dig in plots in exchange for a bit of bread.
IndieHackers itself has become one of these urchins, exhibiting increasing desperation to show ongoing relevance. Skill at software development isn't the thing that's holding most indie hackers back; what's holding them back is that they don't know any good problems to solve. There's an awful lot of money out there waiting to be spent on simple CRUD apps that don't yet exist. You don't need to push the limit of what's possible with computers to make money; you just need to go out into the world to find an actual problem.
I recently watched a YouTube on cultural communication pathways, and there was a comparison of “engineered communication” being a top down approach, as opposed to a gardening approach to communication being a bottoms up approach; one being predictable with measurable outcomes, and the other being organic and unpredictable. In gardening we plant seeds, help them germinate, watch them grow. A lot of the articles on Indie hackers seem to be planting seeds, which I appreciate. I wish HN would see value in a range of articles, and not skew to preferring engineered rigid predictability. Pardon the overstatement but you get my drift.
I would urge caution around this - in fact - deliberate practice is probably worth 10 times this. There's a reason people tend to plateau early in their efforts to master something. Once your brain figures out how to put the skill on autopilot you're going to find your rate of improvement significantly slower.
It's not just about the time you put in - it's about the type of practice you put in.